


Another Damn (Vam)pire Story

by BrooklynBugleBoy



Series: Another One Bites At Dusk [1]
Category: Queen (Band), Rock Music RPF
Genre: AIDS, Age Difference (Physical not Chronological), Aging, Aromatic Dominique, Babies, Band is Together, Blood and Gore, Child Turning, Contracts, Demons, Dhampirs, Disordered Eating, Dorks in Love, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Folklore, Half-Human, Half-Vampires, Halloween thing, Hepatitis, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Insecurity, Love, M/M, Men Crying, Monsters, Multi, Polyamory, Pregnancy, Queen - Freeform, Selkies, Sickness, Smile, Souls, Spooky Queen, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Ulcers, Useless Vampires, Vague Non-Con (sort of), Vampire Problems, Vampires, Werewolves, Witches, gangrene, parenting, supernatural themes, turning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-03 23:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16335179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrooklynBugleBoy/pseuds/BrooklynBugleBoy
Summary: "Meddows Roger Taylor (He would rearrange those names in later years), was born en caul on October 31st, in the wee hours of the morning when the veil between their world and the other was at its thinnest.A liminal time. Samhain. Halloween."The only son of a naive young girl, who nearly died bringing him into the world, and a bloodthirsty corpse.Born a half-vampire, because being a bloody bastard wasn't hard enough. An innocent born damned.And how that pedigree changed everything...





	1. The End

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 한국어 available: [Another Damn (Vam)pire Story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16928070) by Anonymous 



> Little thing I wrote up for Halloween, here's the first bit. 
> 
> Enjoy! :) ;)
> 
> Note: Features characters based on real people. None of these events or situations happened. Duh ;)

_“In tombs of gold and lapis lazuli_  
_Bodies of holy men and women exude_  
_Miraculous oil, odour of violet._  
_But under heavy loads of trampled clay_  
_Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood;_  
_Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.”_

-W.B. Yeats

 

 

 

He was born en caul on October 31st, in the wee hours of the morning when the veil between their world and the other was at its thinnest. A liminal time.

His father had called it Samhain, the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the darker half of the year.

His father, the sorrowful creature with eyes rose-red, supple swollen lips and skin the color of alabaster stone, who had given those same attributes to his son, apologized. He reached out to play with his only child’s white-gold tresses, absently rubbing an thumb pad against the sharp protrusions from the boy’s plum soft gums. They were keen enough to draw blood, a few obsidian drops that fell onto the infant’s eager tongue. His baby boy shuddered at the taste, opening his own crimson eyes to focus on the cause of his damnation.

His father gave him first blood, gave him another name to compliment the unassuming choices of his mother, and was gone.

 _Meddows Roger Taylor,_ who in later years would write his names in reverse order, never saw his sire again.

But the dark creature’s absence could not erase his son’s pedigree.

The baby boy was born damned.

  
-X-

  
Meddows remembered watching _Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror_ for the first time, at all of four years old, sitting in his mother’s plush lap.

And he remembered hating it with all the passion in his tiny nonthreatening body. His Mum had laughed at all the unspeakable anger on his puffy red cheeks, scowling so hard his forehead wrinkled.

“What’s wrong, _baby bat?_ ”

Meddows had looked up at her with a long-suffering roll of his eyes. “He looks stupid, Mummy! His pointy teeth are in the wrong place and he looks like a monster!” Then horror seemed to dawn on him and his eyes were wide as he turned back to her, voice turned shrill in fear.

“Did Daddy look like _that?!_ ”

His Mum only huffed an easy laugh at his shriek, shaking her head and winging a prayer for poor Max Schreck’s soul.

“No, love. Your Daddy looked like Bela Lugosi.” She sounded wistful, fond. “But you’re still a little young for _Dracula_.”

Little Meddows had looked utterly affronted. “Mummy! I’m a big boy!”

She smothered another laugh and nodded in mock-seriousness, “Yes, little bat. You most certainly are. But it’s bedtime, the sun’s almost up! …Kiss goodnight?”

He smiled obediently and pressed a gentle kiss to the corner of her mouth and then wriggled down a little lower to press a kiss to the top of her ever-growing belly. She must have felt like the size of a three-story house by then, her due-date inching ever closer. In later years he understood what she must have been thinking: _At least this one will be born in a hospital with pain medication and medical personnel. ...At least this one will be born human._

“Night-Night, Mummy! Night-Night, _Baby Moon!”_

He had crowed, full of so much love to give.

And when his baby sister was born, it was his little nickname for her that gave her the given name Clare. _(For the lullaby, Clair de Lune)._ And gave his mother a Baby Bat and a Baby Moon.

A mortal Queen of the Night.

  
-X-

  
Truro was home.

Full of old historic buildings that cast the most lovely shadows at night, a marina with docked ships ready at the harbor, bobbing in the black sea, beautiful cemeteries with mossy gravestones and a church with the middle collapsed inward. It was _home_.

Even if the neighborhood children learned to fear the dark house at the end of the street.

Poor Clare never had any friends at the nearby day-school because of it. Little Meddows could never attend, in the desire to not die a grizzly sun-exposed death.

But his sweet baby sister would often come home in tears. 

So he solved it the only way he knew how. _(No, he didn't eat them)_.

The other children were never quite so cruel again, not after he terrified them at their windows and in their dreams at night, but she still never had any friends regardless.

He’d likely scared them all away by simply existing, Clare's defense being the final nail in his coffin. They didn’t even want to _talk_ to her anymore. Treated her like a bloody pariah. She must have resented him for it. But if she did, she never told him so, instead they were as close as close could be. Being each others’ only friends and all. She was his protector just as much as he was hers. He would take her flying at night, holding her hand as they soared through the night skies. Then she would shield him on the roof in the wee hours of the morning so that they could watch the sun rise together.

Clare was the reason, his mother was another, that he never felt like a monster.

His pedigree wasn't normal, but that didn't mean they weren't an ordinary family. 

They loved watching horror movies together. Ironically, of course.

They would all cram onto their little couch, Meddows nursing a O- and cherry milkshake, Clare and his mother’s being a strawberry-vanilla mix, and binge-watch six or seven in a row. _The Wolf Man, Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Cat People, Vampyr, Werewolf of London, Son of Dracula_ and _Mark of the Vampire_ being a few favorites.

Being only a half-vampire, a _dhampir_ as he had taken to calling himself, a name stolen from old Bulgarian folklore, none of the TV or movie vampires were ever quite on par. All doing things he wasn’t capable of, or doing them the wrong way. But that was mythology for you, never quite getting the story right.

 _Music_  became a comfort, something he picked up to do in the daylight hours when he could sleep no more.

He started with piano, then guitar, ukelele and finally the drums.

That was where he found his niche.

He loved the rhythm, having predatory ears attuned to searching out the beating of victims’ hearts, it was a comfort. He could tune his drums, could easily hear the idiosyncrasies in sound that human ears couldn’t identify past the fact that they enjoyed it.

Playing gave him the ability to use his natural skills without shame, without having to hold back, as living in a human world meant always having to calculate what amount of strength or speed to use. How to look dull and pathetic enough to fade into obscurity. But when he played, he was _free_. He could use his impeccable hand-eye coordination to produce a flawless system of movements, tailored just for him.

It was like breathing, living, an exploration of it all.

When he left Truro, it was in the middle of the night, while his mother and sister slept soundly in their beds. He held an acceptance letter from London Hospital Medical College in one hand, aiming to study dentistry of all things.

He loaded everything he had into his car, his drum kit, his protective clothing and curtains to keep out the sun, small human blood supply for emergency doses, all the like. No coffin necessary, he’d called in a few blood favors and had a flat ready for him to move into when he got to the city. Night classes, a makeshift spaceman suit made out of protective clothes and stray animals to feed on; he’d be just fine.

But he left without saying goodbye.

Because in his too-hot skin and racing heart _(twice as fast as any human’s)_ he knew, that if they’d so much as said the words, he would’ve stayed.

  
-X-

  
Maybe it was London, so full of oddities by itself and that wasn’t even counting the student population, but he made _friends_.

He, who only left his apartment at night or in several layers of dark clothing and sunscreen. Sporting his tiny girly frame, freakishly red-irised eyes and delicate features. _He_  made friends with _other living beings_ who acted like he was just a normal bloke. It was like a God-ordained miracle.

Meddows, or _Roger_ now as he insisted on being called _(even though he sometimes forgot his new first-name and wouldn’t answer when called),_ knew what he looked like and even knew _why_.

A predator of humans had to be resourceful.

Prey would most likely be frightened away by a menacing monster of a man, so instead Roger looked as delicate and breakable as a porcelain doll. Something that needed to be cared for. Something that would be inviting and attract attention. His allure would bring out the parental and protective urges in those who guessed his age to be younger. The same protectiveness could also be attractive to those who favored weaker partners, or saw him as feeble and needy. Those who were attracted to larger, more imposing figures would be attracted to his prettiness if nothing else. After all, little apes were designed to enjoy _pretty things._

Maybe those new friends had been attracted, enraptured by his allure, long enough to befriend him and keep coming back.

Strange, but plausible.

“Hey, Roggie! You play drums don't ya?”

He cocked an eyebrow, nursing a ( _very)_ Bloody Mary _(no tomato juice in this one, folks)._ “Yea? Why? You need a sub-in or somethin’?”

Instead he got a scrap of throwaway paper unceremoniously shoved into his face.

  
_(Mitch Mitchell/Ginger Baker type) Drummer Needed for Band (Smile)!_  
_Imperial College London, South Kensington_  
_February 8th, 1968_  
_3pm, Practice Room 8_  
_*Bring own kit*_

  
Roger just shook his head, “You’ve got to be kidding me, mate. Bugger off.”

And… he was there at 2:45pm, setting up in an empty room.

_(What could he say? He was weak-willed and he really wanted to play in a band. Sure it was probably a logistically terrible idea, considering what he was and all. But, eh. It probably wouldn’t pan out anyways, might as well try.)_

He was laying on his back, staring up at his kit, tuning and trying to get the body alignment just right when he heard them come in. Actually, he heard them from all the way down the hall, agreeing rather loudly that nobody was going to actually show up. That they should just give up. That music was stupid and that they needed to focus on their fall-back careers because…

Roger whistled, sharp and piercing.

The two dark haired blokes, one of which with the most atrocious bowl-cut that Rog had ever seen and ends that stunk vaguely of a flatiron, looked over in surprise. Oh, at least bowl-cut had pretty eyes.

“‘Ello, nerds! So are we getting the audition started or what? I’ve got birds to do and homework not to.” He winked and bowl-cut looked like he was about to die. The other bloke looked bloody delighted.

“Tim Staffell.” Grinning Bloke.

“Brian May.” Bowl-cut and with the way that he was carrying on, Roger was surprised not to hear a Dr. before his name.

“Meddows Taylor. That’s spelled: M-E-D-D-O-W-S, but you won’t need to use it. I go by _Roger,_ its my middle name and far less girly, innit?”

Tim laughed, Brian scowled.

“Can you play, _Meddows?_ ”

Ooo, that Brian was a feisty one. Roger just winked.

“Wonders, love. And its _Roger_.”

He supposed he played so well that afternoon out of spite, and because playing was just his thing. His refuge. Rolls of thunder came from his fingertips, his feet pounded like rain, the cracks of the cymbals were his lightning and he took off like a hurricane. They let him go off on his own at first. Let him get lost in his warm-up hurricane of quick movements and spins as his sticks whirled in his hands like plane propellers. When he finally looked up, cheeks pink with exertion and his mouth closed because his fangs were out, like they always were when he got excited, Brian was staring open-mouthed. Tim was smiling from ear to ear.

_Meddows Roger Taylor: Dhampir, horrible dental student, supernatural abomination and newest drummer of a band called Smile._

Had a nice ring to it.

He had to play a few more songs, with them as accompaniment this time, before they offered it up on a silver platter, like they were doing him a favor by letting him sign on. Pssht, as if.

He took his chance anyway. Snapping it up like a promise.

_I promise: I’ll make you like me one day, Brian May. With your stupid guitar and burnt hair._

His new bandmates lingered as he packed up his kit and checked his watch. 5:45pm. The sun was low in the sky, but still very much there. So on went the spaceman gear.

Heavy rubber black boots, they ended around his knees, and he’d use silvery duck-tape to fasten the edges to his red leather pants, sticking it all down. Then a thick woolen sweater over his sweaty tank-top, a rain slicker on top of that and a thick black trenchcoat on top of that. Bright yellow rubber gloves all the way to his elbows with the edges taped down, finished up the torso ensemble. All that was left was the ski-cap, the enormous floppy sunhat, two scarves, bigger sunglasses to go over the small ones he always wore, earmuffs, buckets of sunscreen and three decorated polyester surgical masks. Oh and his heavy black umbrella that was shaped like a Q-tip for optimal protection.

Yeah.

“Uh, Rog? You know it’s pretty warm out there, right? Hot even, for February.”

Tim reminded him, gently. As if afraid to poke the sleeping bear, his newest bandmate, Roger only smiled.

“Well Tim, love. These are to make sure the sun doesn’t kill me. I’ve got a really bad allergy. _Deathly_.” He added, as if the point hadn’t really gotten across. “The cold doesn’t bother me though.”

Instead of the surprise and disgust, he was expecting. Brian rolled his eyes in annoyance and Tim laughed, those seemed to be their token reactions where he was concerned. He just blinked silently, deadpan and waiting for them to recognize their mistake. Bless poor Tim, he realized first.

“Oh Christ, you’re _serious?_ You're allergic to the bloody _sun?”_

He sounded incredulous, Roger just nodded and shrugged, continuing to get ready. He missed the way Brian instantly looked over with those big worried owl eyes of his.

“Well, yea. But its honestly not that big of a deal. I mean, I can’t be in the sunlight without having nasty seizures and shit. But it’d take about twelve hours of being directly hit with the stuff to kill me, so probably not the way I’m going out. I’m reckless, not completely stupid.”

“So _seizures_ are no big deal then?”

What may have sounded like concern to Brian, came off as annoyance and irritability to Roger, who scowled.

“I’ve had worse, May. Bugger off. Come harp at me when you can use a flatiron without toasting your hair like a crumpet.”

That affronted squawk was going to take some getting used to.

It made his hypersensitive ears _ache_.

  
-X-

It was hard to be a dhampir around Brian May.

Hell, it was hard being a _human_ around Brian May.

The man was insufferable. Most of the time he’d be quietly moping or lost in his own little dream world of stars and guitars, pausing only to let out some shining pearls of wisdom or write an amazing song. Then he would have these intense soapbox moments, spending hours talking about vegetarianism or animal rights and Roger would have to guiltily tune out, thinking of the three street cats he’d drained dry that week.

Brian didn’t drink much and when he did, he only got sick and mopier.

Roger would have to heave him home like a wet noodle and fittingly grumble the whole way, begrudging how he couldn’t just fly them around and thankful for the vampiric strength that let him heft Brian without a hitch. Then, just when he’d finally reached his boiling point, Bri would look at him with those puppy-dog eyes and just fling his arms around Rog, having to bend almost in two to do so.

“Thanks Roggie, you’re _my best-friend._ ”

Then boom, he got sucked right back into May’s orbit.

Suddenly, he was crooning soft nothings as the beanpole puked into a bucket in his lap. Smoothing his hands through Bri’s naturally curly hair and mopping the brunette’s forehead with a wet towel, like a Revolutionary War matron or something.

“Its okay, _Brimi_. I’ve got you.”

That sleepy smile was worth the world.

Until the next day when suddenly Roger was on par with the gum stuck to the bottom of his clogs.

“I swear to God, Roger if you fuck with the tempo _one more time!_ ”

“I wouldn’t have to if you weren’t so bloody _slow!”_

  
-X-

  
He met Freddie on a Monday.

He knew it was a Monday because he got distracted by a calendar hanging on the wall of a gig they were playing. _Fuck, its already the first Monday of October?_ was his first innocent thought. His second was the very pointy piece of wooden table leg buried in his palm, the same hand that had come up to shield his chest. He would’ve been impaled in the place where _“two roads meet”._ In other words, he would’ve been _very dead._

On the other end of the projectile was a young art student, a young Freddie Bulsara. Who was looking at what he’d done with a petrified mix of sickness and horror.

“Oh My God! I’m _so sorry!”_

“ _Roger! Oh my God, your hand!”_

“Somebody call _999!_ ”

“I’m so sorry, I’m so so sorry! I tripped, I didn’t mean to… _Oh God…_ ”

Everyone was shouting over each other so loudly that it was making his ears scream. His first concern wasn’t even for his hand, it was for the terrified boy in front of him, shaking and crying. “Hey, Hey, its _okay!”_

The boy only blinked at him, gasping and sputtering.

“Please _breathe,_ mate, its just a little cut,” He pulled his hand off the stake with a sickening _squelch_. Oh that went all the way through. _Ew_. Luckily, his vampiric healing was already on the case. He could feel the tissue and sinew knitting itself back together. He tried his best not to vom.

“I don’t think you realize quite how often I hurt myself at these things.” Snatching up someone’s nearby discarded jacket and using it to staunch the flow of blood from his palm. “There was once this horrible row with a tosser who threw his boot at Brimi’s head, of course I gave him what for, but it was touch-and-go for a while.” He checked to make sure his fingers were still functional, before extending a hand.

“I’m Meddows Taylor by the way, call me Roger. Or _Rog_ , or _Best-Drummer-in-Britain, Roggie, Bloke-with-the-Good-Hair,_ whatever’s good for you.”

“ _Freddie_. Freddie Bulsara.”

He looked painfully shy and his accent was English yes, but not a placeable one. He had a strange exotic roll to his words, Roger being the audiophile he was, was instantly smitten with that voice.

Freddie squinted at something off in the distance behind Roger’s head.

“…I think your band’s calling an ambulance now, but I could certainly call you a cab if you want to take that route to hospital.”

Roger shook his head, “Nah, mate. I’m fine.”

Then he bellowed at the top of his lungs, fighting to be heard over the throng and having to tap into his vampiric tonal reserves.

 _“Brimi! Timmy! I swear to God, you’d better hang up that phone right now, I don’t need a bloody ambulance! I’m not going to hospital!”_  
Freddie looked appalled. “Yes, you _most certainly are_ going to hospital! I put a _hole_ in your _hand!_ ”

“I told you it was just a scratch. _”_

“Well, I know what I _saw!”_ Bit of a stubborn one, wasn’t he?

“Freddie…”

“Don’t _Freddie_ me, Meddows Taylor! You are going to get seen to!”

He rolled his eyes to the heavens. “I don’t need another _mother,_ Freddie.”

The other boy flashed his surprisingly large teeth, they looked enormous in the lowlight, pushing out his round pouty lips. Freddie was something to look at, that was for sure. Roger’s heightened senses studied it all in mere seconds, the ridges of his eyebrows, the dark whirling obsidian of his eyes, the cherry rouge slash of his mouth.

“Well, good for you, darling. We’re _going.”_ In a voice that broached no argument on the subject.

He was forced to sit still like a good little boy as a doctor sewed up the already healing hole in his palm. Watched like a hawk by three anxious pairs of eyes (his bandmates and Freddie). He would have to pop open the stitches with a fang later that night, to prevent them from healing inside of him. A whole lot of bleeding trouble for nothing. The dark-haired, buck-toothed boy even insisted on holding his uninjured hand the whole time.

“Wow, Rog…” Fred had looked down at their joined hands in worry, lines creasing his forehead before their time. “You feel really warm. You haven’t got a fever, have you?”

No.

_Fuck you, Dhampir physiology._

A long-fingered hand reached out for his forehead but he ducked away. “No, Fred. I’m _fine.”_

“It’s _Freddie._ Not Fred. _Freddie._ ” Pouty lips on full display.

“Whatever you say, Fred.”

  
-X-

  
Freddie was _Smile_ ’s first groupie, he came to all their shows after the first near-deadly encounter.

But alas, the jokes would never die.

“Oi, Fred is that a stake or are you just excited to see me?”

“Rog, you’re getting on my last bloody nerve! Where the hell is Freddie and that big stick of his?

“Roger! Get down from there! Or my clumsiness will be the least of your worries!”

He rolled his eyes and climbed down from the rafters, after trying in vain to fix one of Brian’s wonky ceiling fixtures. If he used a fair bit of his levitating prowess to slow his assent, well, they didn’t have to know that. Or just how many times he’d passive-aggressively thought, during one of their infamous spats: _I should just eat you three and be done with it. Definitely. I’ll go live in Dad’s Romanian castle and harvest virgins on every full-moon. Yeah, let me go be a proper vampire and not get yelled at for stealing Brian’s space-themed socks for the millionth time (they were just that fucking comfortable, my God! …And it was fun watching that vein in the brunette’s temple twitch)._

It felt pretty stupid having to hop down and wobble like a squishy human, instead of just walking down the wall like a civilized creature. But he put up with it.

He put up with a lot of things for them _(his squishies)._

Brimi, who always needed either a shoulder to cry on or a whiny bitch to call him out on his shit. Roger was good at both.

Tims, who never had any confidence what-so-ever and didn’t really seem like he wanted to be in a band at all. He just wanted the friends. Roger was happy enough to give him that interaction he so craved. Most of it accomplished by making Bri’s life a living hell.

And now _Freddie._

Freddie who was a bit of a human disaster, really. He was a student at Ealing, same as Tim, but nobody really knew where he buggered off to, when he wasn't with them or in class. It worried Roger a fair bit more than he’d dare let on. But still…

The boy was snooty in a cute sort of way, and painfully shy around new people. Yet he was as open as could be with them, giving scathing criticisms on everything from Roger’s human metronome tendencies to Brian’s horrendous choice of footwear. He was the kind of sod to find stray kittens and bottle-feed them out of his own pocket and time. Then convince himself that he needed all seven of them for his kitty army. The kind of bloke who would kick a broken bar table into the corner so nobody would get hurt after a brawl, and bring a table leg to the bartender as evidence. _(Accidentally impaling Rog but that was besides the point)._

Point was, the boy didn’t seem to have a steady sort of income or a place to stay, and it bothered Roger infinitely.

Every time Freddie flopped onto a couch at Bri’s place for band practice, Roger had to resist the urge to drag the buck-toothed little imp home with him. For a bloody sandwich and a bed if nothing else!

Of course if he ever did plan on bringing any of them over to his place, he’d have to rearrange quite a few things. Maybe actually turn on the lights and see what the place looked like for starters. Move his refrigerated blood supply into a couple of plastic jugs marked “Beet Juice”. Probably shove the coffin underneath his bed…

Just usual tidiness things.

“Look _Mother!_ I’m off the ceiling!” He bitched, turning to look at Freddie. Who was licking his lips and squinting something fierce, trying to focus on Roger’s face through the horrible blasting lights.

One whiff was enough to catch the heady scent of vodka, maybe something stronger. The dhampir sighed.

“You’re hungover, Fred.” A statement of fact, not a question.

The boy’s eyes were bothering him, so without really thinking about it, Roger pulled off his omnipresent sunglasses. He had another pair buried in his bag. And handed them over with a bored sort of expression on his face. “Here, these should help.”

Freddie took them obediently, a first time for everything, and just stopped. Staring at Roger with his mouth half-open and squinty eyes turned wide. The dhampir could even see those blocky teeth that the boy expressly hated. _What?_

“ _What?”_

Freddie swallowed, it sounded painful.

“Darling, what’s wrong with your eyes?!”

Brian and Tim looked over and Roger looked at them for clarification. But both their eyes widened as well. Roger vaguely considered looking for a mirror but then he remembered. _Fuck._

“Oh! You mean the red?” All three nodded. “They’re not actually red. My lens is just _really_  thin so you can see all the blood vessels and muscle underneath. Lots of albinos have the same problem.” He shrugged, then went back to idly toying with his drums.

“ _Albino?”_ Freddie piped up, still sounding confused.

“Explains the sun allergy.” Brian nodded, as if it was all making sense in his head. Then began to explain to Freddie and Tim what _albinism_ was. Roger was too busy patting himself on the back for thinking of such good cover on the fly. Of course, also nodding every so often so they thought he was paying attention.

  
-X-

  
Smile disbanded on the same day Tim found out the truth.

But strange enough, those two things weren’t cause and effect.

  
Tim running out of the studio like a bat out of hell _(he would know)_ to escape it all and walking in front of a night-bus was more like it.

Roger was thankful for several things that night. How Freddie and Brian hadn’t followed them. How it was nighttime and more than shadowy enough for him to easily hide. And how people in lovely London just didn’t give a shit.

He vaguely recalled screaming Tim’s name.

The way the dark-haired boy had turned back to look at him with terrified eyes, hand outstretched as he was bathed in the headlights of the oncoming metal beast. His singer, his friend, the boy with an easy smile who hated being alone. He watched those lips form his name like everything was in slow-motion. Then he _moved._

It didn’t matter that he was just as human as he was vampire, on instinct his vampiric blood was the stronger of the two and it would _not_ let Tim die.

Everything happened in a blur, his mist form cloaked him the moment he wrapped his arms around Tim’s waist, hooking his friend’s face between his cheek and collarbone to prevent the toll of vampiric speed and force on the human body. Instinct was a funny thing for him, it was acting on that and muscle memory alone that got them across the city and inside his flat within moments. Just in time for Tim’s breath to rattle in his chest and his eyes to blink open in terror. Only to find himself facing a chest the color of skim milk and dark curtains covered in fuzzy bat stencils, rather than the shiny chrome bumper of a bus.

“Rog, _what_ …?”

Tim blinked and scrubbed at his eyes.

“I was… there was a night-bus.”

Tim jolted ramrod straight and shoved his way out of Roger’s grip. Eyes watering and shaking his head. “Oh my God. Oh my God! Am I _dead?_ No, _no! You… you pushed me_ out of the way! _Oh God, Rog we’re dead_. We’re _dead_ , aren’t we?”

“Timmy…”

The older boy looked like he was hyperventilating and Roger snapped his fingers to let light bath the room with a comforting yellow glow. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh… _**FUCK!”**_

Then Tim caught sight of Roger’s hideous vampiric face for the first time.

Seeing those fully elongated fangs that brushed his bottom lip, swollen red eyes that made the sclera _(the whites of his eyes)_ near disappear, his curled-up bat nose that jutted, pointed and freaky, out and away from his face, his porcelain skin turned ashy and gray. The veins that stood out like pulsating blue-green racetracks and his ears now garishly pointed, sticking out long past his golden mane. His full vampiric face was a rarity display-wise. The visage of a real monster. It was obvious why he never wore it.

Tim was so surprised at the sight, that he flipped over the back of the fucking couch like a piss-poor acrobat.

“Wha?!… What happened to _your face,_ Roggie?”

His voice was small and brittle, not daring to so much as blink, as he gawked at Roger.

“Nothing. This is what I actually look like.” Sporting a small rueful smile that looked wrong with his monstrous face. “If you think this is bad, try seeing the real face of a full-blooded vamp. You’d lose more than just your lunch, love.”

“… _Vamp?”_

“Vampire.”

Tim grew even paler, his heart racing so fast it was almost deafening to Roger’s heightened senses. “Oh.” His voice came out like a squeak, trembling. “…That’s what I thought you said… Roggie, _vampires aren’t real?”_

It came out like a question.

Blood tears bubbled in his frighteningly feral eyes.

“I’m real. Aren’t I, Timmy?”

He tried to keep his voice soft and bade the vampiric features to melt away. Looking like a pretty little doll would probably be easier for the dark-haired older boy to process.

“Yes.”

Tim whimpered, like he was steeling himself. “You’re a _vampire.”_

A statement, not a question.

“ _Half,_ from my dear old Dad’s side. The other bit’s human.” His eyes were downcast and he leaned over the couch to extend a hand. “I won’t hurt you, Tim. _Please_ believe me.”

Of all the answers he was expecting, all the varying emotions, a watery smile and a hand in his was not in the top ten.

“I know.”

Tim swept the sweat _(tears?)_ from his eyes and added: “Tell me everything.”

That was how they found themselves flopped on Roger’s black velvet couch _(he had a motif going, fuck off)_ watching an endless procession of vampire movies _(his collection was pretty expansive)._ Roger sipping from a Sangria that was more _sangre_ than anything else _(blood in Spanish, yeah he was cultured)_. And them both devouring a pan of Jiffy-Pop each.

“So,” Tim spoke around a fistful of slightly overcooked popcorn. “What you’re saying is… your Dad is basically _Dracula?_ And you want to be a _drumming Dentist?”_

Roger shrugged.

“Well, yea. More or less. He’s ancient, shitty and a Transylvanian noble… Oh _fuck._ ” His eyes widened. “You’re _right_ …”

He groaned and rolled over, draining the last of his glass.

Crimson eyes flicking over to Tim and the way the older boy would laugh and snuggle against him, during the best parts of _The Horror of Dracula._ As if he wasn’t absolutely terrified by Roger’s existence only a few hours earlier. Somehow Roger didn’t think Brian and Freddie would react quite as well. Tim was so adaptable that it was scarier than _him_ sometimes. 

But only time would tell.

And given the fact he hadn’t actually aged since he was seventeen, of all the creatures in the world, Roger would certainly have plenty of that.

  
-X-

  
_“Imagine walking down the aisle._  
_I'll never have that chance._  
_A wedding dress of virgin white._  
_The very best from France._  
_The arching of a rainbow_  
_And the way the colors dance._  
_Sunlight playing on my skin._

_I'll never have that chance._

_The mirror with its cruel laugh_  
_Reflects this ageless face of mine._  
_In taunting ways as if to say_  
_"Childhood is not something you can leave behind.”'_

  
_-“I’ll Never Have That Chance” from Lestat: The Musical_

 

 

 


	2. The Middle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somehow this chapter ended up more about love than vampires but eh, ;) 
> 
> (Sections are not chronological :))

“ _Mama, Mama, help me get home_  
_I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own._  
_I found me a werewolf, a nasty old mutt_  
_It showed me its teeth and went straight for my gut._

 _Mama, Mama, help me get home_  
_I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own._  
_I was stopped by a vampire, a rotting old wreck_  
_It showed me its teeth and went straight for my neck._

 _Mama, Mama, put me to bed_  
_I won't make it home, I'm already half-dead._  
_I met an Invalid, and fell for his art_  
_He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart.”_

  
_-"A Child's Walk Home,"_ Nursery Rhymes and Folk Tales

 

 

 

  
John Richard Deacon was quiet, but far from shy, in fact his temper was probably worse than Roger’s or Brian’s at their most heated.

It just took a lot to get him going.

Making him feel incapable as both a husband and future father was the perfect way to press those buttons.

“Deaky, darling, _calm down_.”

Freddie tried his best to soothe their agitated bassist, but to no avail. The chestnut-haired youth had murder alight in his eyes.

“They won’t give me money for the deposit, Fred! What am I going to do? Ronnie and I can’t raise a child on £60! _We_ can barely live on £60! We wouldn’t even be able to live _now_ if Rog didn’t pay for the bloody flat! Ron and I need our own house for the baby, you lot don’t want to be bothered with this! …We’ve had so many hits, we’ve toured, but we’re making more money for _them,_ than they’re ever going to give _us_ and it isn’t fucking fair!”

John kicked a table so hard that Roger was legitimately worried about the state of his foot. The bassist was practically fuming from the ears.

  
Roger sighed, as usual, his bandmates were missing the point. They could only tackle one problem at a time and Trident-EMI was their heavy-hitter. They were getting fucked over. _Again._ He bent over and dug through his bag until he found his pocketbook and a pen, scrawling out a number that looked reasonable for a decently sized London house, tore it off and extended a hand.

“ _Here_ , you should’ve just asked.”

John made no move towards the check, but that round bubblegum pink mouth pressed into a taut little line, his ordinarily warm eyes narrowed sharply.

Freddie was the one who snatched it from Roger’s grip in surprise, his darker eyes widening as he read it.

“Roggie, this is a lot of money. You don’t _have_ this kind of money…”

His voice was turned slow, thick and sweet, like trying to explain something to a child. Brian was watching the exchange with his brows furrowed. Hidden beneath the sunglasses, Roger rolled his crimson eyes.

“I’m fully aware of that, Fred. And obviously, I _do_ , I wouldn’t have offered if I _didn’t._ Is it enough then, Johnny?”

They needed to focus on the bigger issue of Trident-EMI consistently fucking them over. But when his bandmates seemed unable to process the information, he groaned.

“What?… Somebody ought to get some use out of dear old Dad’s blood money.” _Literally._

“ _Blood money?”_ Bri’s voice was soft.

“Yea, my crusty old man was a bloodthirsty Romanian Prince or something, killed whole a bunch of people on pikes. You guys know this! I have an bloody long useless Romanian name on a separate ‘ _diplomatically immune_ ’ passport, an old castle somewhere in Transylvania and a whole lot of old blood money. That’s it. Skipping queues at airports, some old tat and a security blanket.”

The room was silent.

“ _What…?!_ ” It came out like a whine, as he rolled his eyes and flopped back into a chair.

“Rog, you just described _Vlad the Impaler_ … Are you…?” Brian took a deep rattling breath. “Is your Dad…?”

Brian looked like a mix between horrified and awestruck, Roger winced.

_Goddammit, Dad._

“I dunno. Probably? Was he the only bloke who did that?”

“Well, he was certainly one of the most cruel. He was part of the inspiration for _Dracula…”_ Brian instantly scowled at his own words. Mumbling something under his breath that sounded remarkably like: _fuck, I should’ve known._

_Goddammit, Mum._

“Are we just going to ignore the fact that Roger is bloody _royalty?!_ Is that not an important bit?!” Freddie looked aghast, vehemently waving his hands to exemplify his point.

“I’m not royalty, love.”

“You have a bloody castle!”

“I’m the son of a viscount at best.”

“ _A viscount?!”_

John cleared his throat pointedly, distracting Freddie from his practically imploding worldview, and Roger from desperately trying to pirouette around the fact that he was rich because his ancient crusty father had murdered the Turks.

Their bassist was holding the check, it seemed to have magically teleported from Freddie’s hand into his. But he was extending it back to Roger.

“Okay, first of all, we all know Rog isn’t fully human and his Dad was a vampire. Him being a famous one with a history, isn’t that big of a stretch. Secondly, no. I don’t want your money, Roger.”

 _Want,_ being the operative word. Because he _needed_ it.

The dhampir pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh. “ _Deaky_ …”

“No, Rog. I can do this on my own.”

When it became obviously apparent that in no way in hell was Roger going to take back that check, John slammed it down on the table. Pride and shame burning high in his cheeks.

“Deaky, be _reasonable_ , mate.” Roger tried to chide, but it fell on deaf ears, as usual. If he was being the voice of reason, something was seriously wrong. “You can pay me back later? If its really _that big_ of an issue.”

“I don’t need it now!”

In that moment, the twenty-something young husband and future father looked remarkably like he hadn’t aged a single day since 1971, four years prior, since stumbling into their audition with a homemade amp and his bass guitar. Nineteen years old and flushed with the folly of youth. Roger had been scared at the time, that they’d corrupt him. But those fears were soon laid to rest. He’d already _come_ that way.

“You’re the one who so insistent to leave the flat! You don’t even have to _go!”_

 _Fuck,_ his own feelings had gotten tangled in. Abort the mission. _Abort!_

“ _Oh.”_ The younger man’s face darkened. “So _that’s_ what this is about.”

Roger used his fangs to nip open the side of his cheek, like he always did when he was nervous. Tasting his own blood inside his mouth.

“ _John_ …”

It was obviously a big deal if he was using his lover’s real name.

“ _What?_ Did you think I was going to spend my whole life playing games with you three? Work is one thing, but why everything else? This isn’t _normal._ ” His voice had dipped into a place that was unnecessarily cruel. Freddie and Brian heard it too.

“Darling, _nothing_ we do is normal. What’s so good about _normal_ anyway?” There went Freddie, trying to placate again with that easy smile of his, showing his teeth because it was just _them_. It was always okay around _them_.

“Least of all, _Roger_.” The youth grumbled. “Maybe I just don’t want to raise my son around a bloodsucking _monster._ ”

The only sound in the room was a sharp intake of breath from Freddie.

Brian’s jaw dropped and he instantly reached for the blonde, but he was too far away.

John’s reaction was the most visceral though, it was the one Roger was watching.

The bassist looked shocked the moment the words left his mouth, as if he hadn’t meant them at all. Not surprising considering how often Deaky’s words ran away from him when he got upset and spoke those caustic emotions. It was why he was often silent in their arguments. Apt to take things way too far.

Like now.

Roger had told them his secret a year or so prior, after Brian’s hepatitis and ulceric health-scare. In that moment, his last thought had been making it with a band they’d called _Queen_ and his first, was the fact that he just couldn’t live without his boys anymore. The desire to _Turn_ Brian was something he couldn’t ignore.

He didn’t even know if it was _possible_ , but he was willing to try anything.

In the end, he didn’t have to.

But he would’ve, without a second’s hesitation.

And the offer would always be there.

Even if it meant the Drudges ( _The closest thing they had to a vampire government. A way to condemn the most monstrous of monsters)_ despising him for more than just his existence.

Blood tears prickled in his eyes, the only way a vampire could cry.

He slowly lowered his head, letting his blonde bangs fall over his sunglasses like a shield.

“Roggie, I didn’t mean _that. I…_ ”

John was frantically shaking his head, as if that made it better. Roger was relieved that they couldn't see the tears he was trying his best to smother. He was human too.

“ _Fuck you, Deacon._ I’m _out_ of here!”

His fangs brushed against his bottom lip like razorblades and he shoved his way past his bandmates, his _lovers_ , to reach the door on the other side of the studio. If he stayed, he risked losing control and hurting them. A sin, worse than the breath in his lungs or the too-fast pounding of his heart.

He would step outside for a moment, sit on the stoop outside the building and breathe in the night air. If only to center himself for a second longer.

“ _Wait,_ _**ROGER!”**_

He threw open the door with a touch of too-much strength, the door handle even bent a little in his hand.

Just as Brian screamed his name, in a tone he couldn’t remember ever hearing before.

He was standing on the front step before he saw it. Before he _realized_.

For an instant, the _sunlight_ of midday was so beautiful.

Then every synapse in his body caught _on fire_  all at once.

He couldn’t hear himself scream, but the sound must’ve been unholy. He was in too much pain _to live, to breathe, to hear, to see_ , it was as if he was in a whole new plane of existence, one where the only thing to _be_ was his own agony.

Brian had run after him and bodily dragged him back inside after only a few minutes of direct sun exposure. Freddie had quickly slammed the door shut once more, within seconds. But the damage had already been done.

Roger was lost in the throes of a seizure so _violent_ , that he climbed the fucking wall on his back. It was like a scene out of _The Exorcist_ as he writhed on the ceiling. Frothy blood bubbling up from his mouth, streaming from his eyes and nose, his wrists torn open vertically from mid-forearm to palm, blood oozed from pinpricks around his hairline as the same happened on his feet. _The stigmata of the damned._

Blisters swelled up and popped on the ridges of his cheekbones and around his eyes.

All of it accompanied by his unearthly screams of pure agony.

It was as if the rational human part of his body had ceased to exist, replaced by the instinctual vampiric desire of a continued immortal life.

In the center of the madness, he felt the soothing balm of his mother’s touch. Remembering a few mistakes as a child, when he’d curiously gotten too close to the day’s light. How she had kissed the pain away.

How a tiny Meddows had held up burnt pink palms, blood tears rolling down his child-chubby cheeks.

“Why does it hurt me, Mummy? It doesn’t hurt you or Baby Moon.”

“You’re just so _special_ , baby.” She’d held him close to her chest, so that he could hear the steady beat of her heart and the rush of the blood in her veins. Comforting sounds to his pointed little ears. “ _The Sun_ and _The Moon_ fought over you for so long after you were born, they both wanted to spend time with you _always_. So they played a little game to see who would get to keep you, forever and ever. The Sun lost, so she only gets you when you cover up nice and tight, and only for little bits at a time. Or she’ll hurt you by accident. But The Moon gets you all the time, because he won the game. _Understand, baby?_ ”

“Yes, Mummy…" A small whimper. " _I love you._ ”

“I love you too, darling.”

She’d kissed his palms then and in true childish fashion, mentally he made the healing her doing. Not the dark gift of his cursed vampire blood.

It was the love of his mother that had taken his pain away.

 

Roger fell to the floor with an audible _crack_ of something important, his blood oozing into the carpeting below.

Him going from the crazed throes of a bloody seizure at full vampiric speed, to the still visage of _death_ as he lay flung haphazard on the studio floor, must have been horrifying to his bandmates, his lovers, who were all instantly at his side.

“ _Roggie, Rog_ , open your eyes.” _Brimi._

Even in his silent haze of muted fire, the healing of his exposure felt like it was charring the marrow of his bones, consuming everything inside him until there was nothing left behind but dying embers.

He also felt, in land far far away, how Brian lifted him up and into his lap. Those long callused fingers wiping the blood from his cheeks, rearranging his limbs into a better position, dripping water onto his fevered raw skin. _No_. Water didn’t _sting. Tears_. He’d made Bri _cry._ That one hurt worse than the charring.

“Roggie, love, _please.” Freddie._ “…Oh, come _off it!_ Look, you’ve gotten blood all over your lovely trainers! How about I take you shopping for new ones, _hm?_ I won’t even complain when you choose the brightest, most obnoxious colors.” His hands were buried in Roger’s matted hair and his voice sounded awful. Trembling and so strained, like he was trying not to cry, trying to deny everything taking place in front of his eyes. “I believe I saw some leopard print ones down where we used to have our stall. Do you remember, Roggie?”

That beautiful voice broke then, giving way to sobs that shook Freddie’s whole frame and left him fisting his hands in Roger’s hair and pulling viscously, trying to get a response. _Anything._

“ _Wake up, darling! Bloody wake up this instant!_ ” Their Persian prince shrieked, desperation broadening his vowels and sharpening his t’s.

Bri was still crying silently, almost as if it was out of his control, rocking Roger’s body back and forth slightly with each hiccuping gasp.

“He’s _dead_. He said it would take _hours_ … He said…”

John sounded empty.

“I’ve _killed him._ We watched him _die.”_

Freddie let out a sound akin to that of a wounded animal.

But in one fell swoop, Roger felt his spine _snap_ back together, felt the burning inferno inside him extinguish itself, leaving him exhausted and spent. His too-hot skin and too-fast heart were doubling up on their usual gusto and he felt just bloody awful. But at least he wasn't actively dying anymore. His wrists and feet itched something terrible as they healed and sorted themselves out.

The drummer moaned and blinked open his crimson eyes, sunglasses buggered off to who-knows-where.

“Well. Tha’ was bloody _bollocks_ , tha’ was…” He slurred, not entirely sure of which way was up and which was down at the moment. He only knew it was Bri holding him from the scent.

Hadn’t changed in half a fucking decade.

The poodle man still smelled of the oil used to loosen the joints of his telescope, the vaguely metallic twang of the sixpence coin he used as a guitar pick, expensive scented hair-products, and day-old cologne. He hadn’t been playing with his camera recently or the silver in the old photographs would be giving Roger a worse headache than he already had. Well, _at least_ the burnt hair smell was gone. The best _(and only)_ improvement.

Freddie let out a frantic, bubbly little laugh, verging on the hysteric.

Brushing tears away from his cheeks and lowering his hands to cup Roger’s chin.

“God, Roggie. You’re _okay?_ ”

He hummed a broken affirmative and attempted to shift his face into something that didn’t look like a gory bat-like monster, certain his vampiric features were on full-display. While Bri was trying to compose himself, face buried in Roger’s matted tresses. Shoulders shaking and trembling in a way that was involuntary.

A small pale hand twitched and sluggishly moved to lace itself with Brian’s, trying to afford the beautiful man some modicum of comfort.

“Brimi, _breathe_.” His thumb whirled around the top of Bri’s hand. “I’m fine, lovie. Ya _know_ me.”

His voice still sounded a fair bit off.

“No, you _stupid little vampire_. You are not _fine_.”

Deaky’s sounded even worse.

“It’s _dhampir_ , love. Not that you’d care… we’re all _bloodthirsty monsters_ , right?”

Blood tears burned and fell from his eyes. But given that he was already bloody, it was of no consequence. He felt as raw and exposed as a wire. Trembling slightly in Brian’s hold as he itched and his body knitted itself back together. John was gritting his teeth and looking downcast.

“You know, I never asked for _this_.” His breath hitched.

“ _Vampires_ get a _choice,_ at least they’re supposed to anyway. Maybe…” He sniffled, pathetically. “ _Maybe_ that’s why I make the distinction. So many vampires _chose_ this life. And even if they didn’t, they got to be human once. I was _born_ like this. I was _born hated._ When even _the damned_ reject you, call you an _abomination._ It changes something…” His free hand fluttered around his chest. “Changes something _in here_ … I’ve..."

He swallowed and it _hurt_. "...only known one other like me. She was a little girl with big red eyes and hair, and destroyed a whole town of humans somewhere in rural Ukraine. They killed her.”

He never spoke of things like that. Never to them anyway. Freddie was staring at him horrified with hot fat tears still rolling down his cheeks, John was trembling with clenched fists and while he couldn’t see Brian’s face, he knew it must have been twisted in the same vein as the others.

“The humans?”

Freddie’s voice seemed so torn.

Roger shook his head.

“ _Vampires_. Dhampirs are abominations for a reason, child vampires aren’t allowed to exist, they have no self-control and can’t be self-sufficient, ever. Dhampirs are the closest you can get to a vampire child, which is why The Counsel _(the Drudges)_ hate us so much. We always destroy and usually _get destroyed_ during our formative years. I didn’t, because my Dad is one of the oldest of our kind and I spent my childhood locked away in a Truro basement. He still had to plead my case though, when I was older.”

He let out a sad little laugh. “You know, vampires aren’t allowed to kill their own kind. But they killed every other child like me. So I suppose we just _don’t count.”_

“I’m _sorry_.”

Roger blinked in surprise. John rarely apologized, even if he was in the wrong. They had other ways of forgiving each other. It was never explicitly stated.

In the next moment there were lips on his.

He knew those lips better than his own and made sure his fangs were tucked away, even if he felt like utter shit, John’s touch was worth it. But this was _differen_ t, John’s kisses were usually all passion and violence, clacking teeth and bumping noses. What was happening now was so delicate. John was being _gentle_ with him.

Instead of it being the other way around.

When they both finally came up for air. John was crying, fat warm tears that stung the open weeping blisters around Roger’s eyes. But he smiled regardless, as he always did where John was concerned.

“Deaky, you’re _leaky_.” He teased softly. “You know I’m not mad, I _love_ you.”

He really, really did.

Brian still had the dhampir in his lap and his face buried in Roger’s hair, it didn't seem like he was planning on letting go anytime soon. Freddie even crawled over to lay his head on Roger’s middle and curl up like a limpet. His _boys_.

“I know it’s silly,” He began softly, nuzzling into John’s soft supple cheek with the barest hint of stubble. “But all I’ve ever wanted is to take care of you three. I wanted to get us all a big house, where we could all live together. Fred could bring Mary, Bri could bring Chrissie, you could bring Ronnie and the baby. I know it isn’t what you want, but as long as we’re together, nothing will _ever_ hurt you lot. I promise.”

“ _Yes._ ”

Roger pulled back in surprise. “What?”

“ _Yes_ , we’ll pick a house and live together.” John pressed his lips against the seashell of Roger’s ear. Freddie hummed his affirmative and Brian nodded into Roger’s white-gold mess of hair.

“We could always live in your _castle_ , dear.”

Freddie quipped, with that shit-eating little grin of his. Roger flicked him between the eyes and laughed at the familiar indignant squawk.

His _boys_.

  
-X-

  
Roger, just before they left for Australia in 1974, knew something was very _wrong_ with Brian.

From the very moment their lanky guitarist had left that exam room and come to sit by them again, rubbing at his arm with a little frown on his face. It was just a _shot_ , they’d all gotten them before, Roger had even gotten his knowing full well that his body would burn through the vaccinations in minutes. But hey, he had to look _normal_.

But something was _wrong_.

Brian smelled _wrong_.

Roger had done enough rotations around the hospital to know what illness smelled like, with his heightened senses. Brian smelled _sick_.

He seemed fine enough though, especially after he got some antibiotics for what he had described as ' _a little staph infection'_  from the shot, and Roger tried to brush it off. Tried to focus on playing their gigs, opening for Mott the Hoople, performing their own stuff, having fun with the boys in that bloody rainbow curly wig, drinking ( _in both aspects of the word, copious amount of alcohol and the pretty little things ever so eager to be taken into his bed, who would leave with a pint less of blood and throughly fucked. With no memory other than having had a wonderful night)_ , and just going wild.

Then Bri turned fucking _yellow_ and Roger _knew_.

He rolled over one day in the bed that they’d all crammed themselves into the night before, which was just two massive hotel beds that they’d clumsily shoved together. It was meant to be Roger and Freddie’s room, but of course Deaky and Bri had snuck in after hours.

Roger remembered being gently pushed aside, denied his expected cuddle, in the wee hours of that morning, as Brian exited their puppy pile. His first thought had been: _Oh, he’s got to piss._ But upon opening his crimson eyes, the yellow tint of his lover’s skin was unmistakable. Especially to his vampiric senses.

The hurried rush to the bathroom and obvious signs of Bri having a vom didn’t make things any better.

“Brimi?” He called. No answer.

Checking that their two other lovers were still fast asleep, they were, before using his actual full-speed run to practically teleport himself to the bathroom. He was a blur until he laid a hand on Bri’s heaving upper back. The narrow chest pressed against the toilet as he coughed and violently spat up whatever little solid food that they’d eaten the night before.

His hand slid around to press a hand to Brian’s sweaty forehead beneath the damp curls.

 _Lord_ , he himself ran several degrees hotter than normal humans and Bri felt warmer than him.

“Love, its alright. _Breathe, let it out._ It’s _okay._ ”

Roger crooned. Poor Bri didn’t seem to be able to get a breath in edgewise. Coughing and wheezing pathetically between productive heaves and the nasty splashes of bile and whatever else he could bring up into the toilet bowl. Rog absently pulled a hair-tie off his wrist and used it to prevent Brian’s curls from falling into his sick.

“ _Roggie_ … _hurts_ …” The guitarist gasped, when he could finally slump backwards into Roger’s waiting arms. Hot acrid breath as he panted into Roger’s right pectoral.

His pale hands cupped the taller’s sallow face.

“What hurts, Brimi? Your tum? Did you eat something gone off?”

Roger ran through possibilities frantically in his head, his mind coming to the same conclusion each time. But refusing to admit it. Brian May did not have _hepatitis_. How would he have even gotten it? The fever-stricken man shook his head, trembling like a leaf in Roger’s grasp.

“It’s my _arm_ , Rog. It _burns_.”

Brian was crying, whether from the pain or a reflex from vomiting, it was _horrifying_ all the same. _Shit_.

Roger’s crimson eyes turned to slits and he tasted the air around his lover, the pungent odor of sickness was suffocating, but he tried his best to hone into the source, to find where it was radiating from. _Right arm, the bicep_. A cold chill ran through the dhampir at the thought. That fucking _shot. Little staph infection,_ his arse. He was _livid_.

He used his ever-sharp nails to cut through the dirty makeshift bandage Bri had wrapped around his wound and soon recoiled from the sight. He wanted to vom, it was _that_ bad.

Swollen and fiery to the touch, it was sickly yellow and scorching red but that wasn’t even the worst part. The center of the wound was black-gray, the flesh was fucking _dead_ and he could smell it _rotting_. It was weeping mustard-colored puss and God only knows what else. Roger may not have gone to medical school or dental school for very long. But he certainly knew gangrene when he saw it. _Hepatitis, gangrene_ … How could Roger have missed it all? How could he have missed his lover’s health going into the toilet?

“Does it look _bad?”_

Bri asked softly, not even opening up his eyes. It took all his energy just to pant into Roger.

“No love, it’s okay. We’re going to take you to hospital and everything is going to be alright.”

Reassuringly, gently, not letting his token pain-the-ass have a look.

“Arms around my neck, lovie.”

Brian did so without argument.

Roger fondly remembered the days when his partners would look so _surprised,_ as he tossed them about, over his shoulders, up in a bridal hold, tossing them onto the bed in the throes of passion, as if they didn’t weigh a thing at all. Now, as he scooped up Bri, with the man who had at least five inches on him curled up like a small child. It just felt plain _awful_.

His poor guitarist was dripping with sticky sweat and shivering, his lively sparkling eyes turned dull and glassy when opened and he wasn’t wearing any socks, those tiny pale toes curled into a ball, just like he was. The fact that he could lay so easily in Rog’s hold was alarming in and of itself. Brian was ordinarily so hard to carry, being long, lanky and squirming around something fierce. But _now_ … well, it wasn’t good. Not at all.

He lay Brian on the bed with all the gentleness he could muster, the only change in the guitarist’s visage was the increased shallowness of his breathing. It was almost scary.

“ _John! Freddie!”_

It was a testament to how worried he was, that there were no nicknames, no sweet coos or groping hands. Just cold hard fear.

“Wake up _now_ , we have to get Brian to hospital!”

Deaky jolted upright at the sound of that, even if he was sluggish to genuinely understand the situation. “ _Whazat?_ Brian?”

“He’s sick, Deaks. He’s _so_ fucking sick.”

John fluttered his eyes until they adjusted to the dark and he was instantly crawling over to their lover. “ _Bloody fucking ‘ell!_ ”

Even John’s touch wasn’t enough to rouse him.

A snoring Freddie took some bodily manhandling to shake into wakefulness and Rog instantly regretted how hard he’d done so, when the Persian puffball let out a little whimper, shoving Roger’s hands away.

“Darling, I’m _up, I’m up!_ Where’s the bloody _fire?!_ ” Scowling tiredly, his ordinarily lovely hair in complete disarray.

“Cooking Brian’s brain.” Roger quipped, gesturing to the curly-haired lump that John was whispering soft nothings too, looking stricken and like he was near to grabbing the phone beside the beside lamp and calling an ambulance.

“ _God!_ ” Freddie was scrabbling over as well, his long-fingered paws going straight for his love’s forehead. “He’s _burning up_ , Roger!” Those obsidian eyes were wide, even in the dark, and chilled with fear.

“I know, he’s _really fucking sick_ and its _bad,_ Fred. He’s jaundiced and I think gangrene’s set into his arm, _fuck…_ he might have _sepsis_.” Blood Poisoning. His own hands were shaking something awful and he couldn’t stop them. A misplaced fang cut into the side of his cheek and he could feel the taste of his own thick poisonous blood congealing in his mouth.

“ _Roger?_ ”

Both of them were looking at him, shocked, exhausted and confused, probably hadn’t understood shit about what he’d just said.

He took a deep breath.

“ _Deaky_ , get ahold of whoever you can on the phone, go knock on doors if you have to. Make sure Mott’s manager knows and the Sheffields and everyone else important, okay?” John nodded, lips taut and body stiff, trying to block out everything else like he alway did when he was upset. “ _Freddie_ , grab everything important, the passports and documentation, clothes for all three of us, bring what you can carry and leave the rest. Both of you get dressed, I’ll get Bri. _Hurry._ ”

They both instantly snapped to it.

Freddie looked loath to leave Bri, and kept looking back every few moments as he collected everything. John relished in the distraction and rushed about, talking on the phone and pacing back and forth. Roger made sure to wrap Brian up in everything he could find to keep him warm, even though it was likely the last thing he needed with that awful fever.

“Roggie? ‘m I _drunk?”_

Brian mumbled, glassy eyes at half-mast and unable to follow Roger’s movements, even as the dhampir smiled fondly.

“No, lovie. You aren’t. You’re just a bit sick and we’re gonna go to hospital straightaway and get you better, yea?”

Brian hummed an affirmative, his breath catching in his chest.

“ ‘m sorry, Roggie. Should be practicin’.”

His long fingers twitched, as if searching out guitar strings to pluck. Roger pressed a kiss to those knuckles, imbuing what little warmth and comfort that he could with the gesture.

“No, love.” He chided, softly. “You need to rest.”

“ ‘m letting you and Tim down…” Bri flopped forwards, burying his face in Roger’s middle. The drummer had frozen in his ministrations and stared at his lover in abject horror. John and Freddie both froze in their tasks too. Having been listening in as well.

“Brimi, what are you talking about?” His voice wavered.

“Not practicin’… _Smile_ ’s gonna fail, Roggie.”

 _Shit_. Oh shit, shit, shit, shit. Bri was far worse off than he’d thought, if his beloved guitarist's mind was back in 1968. Oh, _fuck this._

“Hands around my neck, love. I don’t want you to fall.” Like he’d ever drop his Brimi.

He scooped his beloved pain-in-ass up once more and gestured for John and Freddie to follow. Neither needed the prompting. Except Freddie walked over and all but _forced_ Roger to put on a thick brown bomber jacket, sunglasses and dropped a pair of trainers in front of him expectantly. Roger obeyed, having to shift a very clingy, sick Brian in his arms to do so.

“I also have the rest of your protective clothing, dear. For sunrise.”

Sometimes he really didn’t deserve them.

Hell, _most_ of the time he didn’t deserve them.

He carried Brian into that godforsaken hospital, blankets trailing after him like smoke signals. Fuck the Sheffields and Mott’s manager, who expected him to let Brimi suffer in the hotel room while they called a doctor for him like some sort of Victorian lady after a fainting spell. He could smell rot and deathly sickness oozing from the shivering form of his… his… God, his _Brian_.

There was absolutely no way that their Brian was not getting proper medical care.  
  
He was just about their only shred of impulse control. He was their _Bri_ , with his goofy space socks and the way he let Freddie drag him around the stalls of London to pick out matching outfits. That stubble that always turned Roger on through mere touch alone. The way he looked so _blissed-out_ when he played. Like the guitar was an extension of everything he was.

But the one memory that kept replaying in Roger’s mind on repeat, as he laid the shaking boy on a gurney and watched the nurses and A&E staff roll him away, was Brian laying his prized _Red Special_ in Rog’s arms. Insisting on teaching him how to play.

It was in Queen’s earlier days, just after they’d found John.

Before Roger realized his feelings.

Those long spindly fingers caressing his as they counted off each beat. Rog had been so apprehensive.

“Brimi, I don’t want to fuck it up. You love _that thing_ more than anybody here!”

Brian had looked at him with such a withering look, shaking his head and continuing to teach Roger several basic guitar parts that he’d already learned as a child. But those small movements felt so _different_ now, with Brian holding him like that.

_You loved me even then, didn’t you?_

His chest _ached_.

It was so hard to _love_ Brian May.

But it would’ve been harder not to.

  
He didn’t smell the heady scent of _blood_ until they were on the plane.

Brimi curled up in his lap, sick as a fucking dog with hepatitis and a gnarly wound on his arm, one that would need even more care when they got home. The boys had been inoculated for the hep, but the word _amputation_ was still hanging around their necks like a shared noose, an albatross.

Honestly, Roger would still love Brian without any arms or legs, he would still love him if he were purple or the ugliest man on earth. He would still be the same boy that Meddows Taylor fell in love with all those years ago.

But guitar was such a big part of Brian’s identity. Taking it away would break him, in a way that Roger didn't think the man could ever bear. If a damned creature could pray, Roger would sure as hell be doing it right around then.

Freddie was napping on Rog’s shoulder and Deaky had Bri’s feet and legs in his lap. It was when the sick boy shifted that Roger _scented_ it. It wafted up to him like a warning. A promised disaster looming on the horizon.

The smell of blood coming from Brian’s insides.

 _Fuck. Fuck. Fuck_. Now, he was _terrified._

Throwing all caution to the wind, he buried his face in Brian’s stomach, searching for the cause.

The sick man yelped and tried to struggle away with a throaty moan, but Roger held fast. _Intestines. Ulcer_. His limited medical knowledge and nose told him. _Bleeding internally, stomach acid and debris leaking into the abdominal cavity. Infection_ was assured, especially with how battered Bri's immune system already was.

“Roger, what in the bleeding hell are you doing?”

John squawked, reminiscent of Freddie, and Roger raised his towhead.

“Brian’s got an _ulcer_ , right here.” He vaguely pinpointed the correct area of the duodenum. “We need to take him back into hospital as soon as we land. With everything goin’ on already, it could be…” _Fatal. You’re going to lose him._

Roger trembled. Shaking his head as if to reject the notion entirely.

“Love, none of the doctors said anything about any ulcers. You’re just paranoid, darling. We’re worried too…”

Freddie couldn’t calm him though, with that velvety voice. Not with a dying Brian in his lap.

“I can _smell_ it!” He wailed. “I can _smell_ the fucking _blood and debris_ leaking inside of him!” He never meant to reveal so much, but at the looks on their faces, he continued. “I know you don’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe me either. But something is _wrong_.”

“I don’t smell _anything_ , Rog.” John whispered, looking worried.

“ _Humans_ can’t.”

Fuck it. Brian could be dying and it had been six bloody years. Fuck it all to hell. Brian blinked open those yellow eyes crisscrossed with ruby red veins, a rare moment of clarity lighting up his xanthous features. John and Freddie both stared.

“Roggie, now really isn’t the time for jokes.” Freddie began softly, a hand carding through Bri’s curls while his eyes never left Roger’s.

“He’s not joking…”

Deaky knew, or at least suspected. With the way he honed in on his lover’s face. His clenched fists were trembling, but his face was stony. Trying to hide the real emotions that laid underneath. Feelings that weren’t annoyance or anger were _difficult_ for Deaky to share. Roger knew that. But it still hurt.

“ _What are you?_ ”

 _Ouch_.

Roger wanted to recoil from the slap of that icy tone. “How did you…?”

John shrugged, averting his eyes like Roger was a gorgon trying to turn him to stone. “You’ve always been _different_ , I guess. Normal drummers don’t tear through skins as fast as you, or snap sticks in two. You shouldn't be able to lift us and toss us around the way you do. Your eyes get darker after you’ve downed some of those _Bloody Mary_ s you love so much. …You don’t have a reflection and we can’t ever get pictures of you. They’re always blurred…”

He raised a hand to stop the endless deluge of just how badly he’d failed at being human. And John winced, as if expecting _the beast_ in front of him to hurt him. Suddenly, Roger wasn’t their lover, their drummer, their best-friend. He was a _monster_.

A living, breathing nightmare.

He wanted to _cry_.

Freddie didn’t look any better, eyes flitting between them like he had no words. “Roggie…” His sweet fluid voice was suddenly raspy and thick. Brian was wide-eyed, whether that was because he’d fallen asleep like that or he was legitimately afraid, Roger didn’t know.

“My Mum’s human. So’s my baby sister Clare.”

He owed this to them. This whole uncomfortable explanation. Then he deserved their scorn, their ire, if he could only save Bri… that would be enough. Even if he never saw them again. Even if they left him. That would be _enough._

“Well, my half-sister. Her old man’s a human, mine’s a _vampire_.”

 

-X-

  
They didn’t leave him.

He didn’t have to _Turn_ Bri. If such a thing was even possible.

Queen recorded their first hit album, _Sheer Heart Attack_ , staggering their time between the studio and the hospital for Brian. For a month, Freddie and John would stay all throughout visiting hours and then Roger would scale the side of the building at night, to sit on the windowsill and just be _with him_. Sometimes carrying Freddie or John up there as well.

They had actually accepted his pedigree with little fanfare.

Well, they gave him a remarkable amount of shit for it.

But he still had his boys regardless, and that was good enough for him.

Their fourth album, _Night at the Opera_ , began conceptually in 1975 at a little place called Ridge Farm.

It was born of nights spent laying together on soft supple grass, making love beneath the stars. It was born of flying them up into the night sky, so that they could see the stars properly. Playing tennis and snooker as long as they pleased. Skinny-dipping in the pool and nearby lake. Roger learned just how well their four sets of hands fit together. How it didn’t matter what happened, if they just had each other, everything would be _perfect_.

Freddie, sweet clumsy Freddie who could be the worst diva ever to exist, snobby and like a right bitch at times. With his platforms and perfectly varnished nails, was actually at his most _beautiful_ when tossed onto a messy bed, squealing and snorting like a little pig.

Hair in complete cowlick-curled disarray, wearing little more than one of Brian’s oversized professor-esque woolen jumpers. A tomato-red flush high in his cheeks and mouth soapy white with toothpaste, waving the bloody toothbrush around like a magic wand.

Some of their best kisses were frothy and minty fresh.

Deaky’s best kisses were chlorinated, tasting of sweat and pool water. They smelled like skinny-dipping and fresh summer night air.

The brunette was so beautiful with chemicals stinging in his watery eyes and slicked down wet tresses that would dry into the most adorably soft cockney curls. That ruddy little mouth could be so gentle and demure one minute and completely scathing the next.

Loving John Deacon was like loving a stroppy little cat, sometimes they loved to be held and petted, other times they acted like the antichrist incarnate. But it was obvious that no matter how they acted, that they still loved you more than anything else in the world.

Especially when he carried John to bed, at the younger man’s insistence, or the adorable bonny boy simply fell asleep on his chest, snuffling softly into Roger’s scorching skin and tucking his head beneath Roger’s chin. “ _I love you, Deaks_.” The dhampir would whisper into the small seashells of the bassist’s ears.

And all was right in his world.

Roger rarely did any shit with his own hair, besides washing it and occasionally tying it up so it didn’t go everywhere. _Brian_ forced him to learn about hair. Mostly because those curls needed a lot of upkeep and the hospital staff were shite at it.

So Roger took matters into his own hands. Trial and error teaching himself to be a haircare guru.

  
Gently using curl-safe products on Bri’s tresses, scrunching gel into the curls for definition, wrapping it up in a satin bonnet or pillowcase before his lover went to sleep each night and deep-conditioning for added moisture. After his arm was healed and he wasn’t so awfully ill, it was still a favorite pastime of Brian's for Roger to tend to his curls. Giving him dry haircuts and painstakingly moisturizing the ends.

  
Their best kisses smelled of coconut hair milk and were as soft as Brimi’s honey scented curls.

Brian was at his most beautiful with dark curls haloing about his head after a good washing, a warm towel wrapped around his waist and a lap full of Roger.

 

-X-

 

When Meddows Taylor was still a little boy, he asked his mother why his father had never stayed.

“Didn’t he love us, Mummy?”

“Yes, baby bat. He did. He loved us very very much.” She had murmured into his hair, tucking him into his child-sized coffin. As if hoping that would be the end of it. But he refused to let the subject drop. To let it go.

“Then why did he leave if he loved us so much?” He pouted, eternally petulant at that age.

“Your Daddy was a vampire, love. A _very old_ vampire with _very old_ enemies, he left to keep us safe.” Her hand stilled from where it had been playing with his hair. “One day, he can tell you all about it. One day, you two will be as close as can be. _I promise_.” A kiss on his forehead.

His face had instantly brightened.

“Daddy’s going to come home soon?”

But his face fell when his mother shook her head. “No, baby bat. Not _soon_ , I hope. He’ll come find you when Clare and I aren’t here anymore. When you need him most. He swore an oath that he’d come back for you.”

She was standing in the doorway, looking back at him with such a sad smile on her face. He hadn’t understood the sadness until later. Or what she was actually trying to say about his lifespan and her own. That of his sister. That of all the humans in the world he had come to love.

“Where are you and Baby Moon _going,_ Mummy?”

 

-X-

 

Roger woke up from his nightmarish memory in a cold sweat, and disentangled himself from all three lovers on his bed. Still lost in their own dreams as he lunged for the phone in the corner. Twisting the cord around his fingertips anxiously as he queued up the number that he hadn’t touched in seven or so bloody years.

 _“Whazit?_ I was sleepin’! What in the ‘ell you want?” The dulcet tones of his little sister’s voice graced his ears and he nearly hung up the phone right then and there.

“…’ello?! _‘ellloo? Fuck it._ ” She moved to hang up.

“ _Baby Moon_ …” He whimpered.

Then the only sound to fill his ears was the sound of her hitched breathing.

Finally she spoke, and it was like he was a little boy again. _Flying_. “ _Meddows?”_

He’d almost forgotten the sound of his first name.

Then he was talking, speaking so fast that the words climbed over one another, because it was Clare, his _Baby Moon_ , and he’d missed her so much.

“Clarie, do you remember when we were little kids and we used to go hunting for fireflies in the garden at night? We used to put them in jars because they were so pretty, but soon their lights would go out?” He remembered crying over them. 

His chest felt tight and he felt more than a little bit sick.

“Meddows, what’s going on? What are you talking about? Are you _okay?_ Do you need me to come get you?”

He shook his head even though she wouldn’t be able to see it.

“Clarie, I’ve fallen in love with the fireflies…”

Warm blood tears stained his pajama trousers as he hung his head.

 

-X-

 

 _“A lily in a twilight place?_  
_A moonflow’r in the lonely night?—_  
_Strange beauty of a woman’s face_  
_Of wildflow’r-white!_

 _…She held her mouth up redly wan,_  
_And burning cold,—I bent and kissed_  
_Such rosy snow as some wild dawn_  
_Makes of a mist._

 _God shall not take from me that hour,_  
_When round my neck her white arms clung!_  
_When ‘neath my lips, like some fierce flower,_  
_Her white throat swung!_

 _Or words she murmured while she leaned!_  
_Witch-words, she holds me softly by,—_  
_The spell that binds me to a fiend_  
_Until I die.”_

-“ _The Vampire”_ by Madison Julius Cawein

 


	3. The Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Long as fuck and shit gets real. 
> 
> (Also I added an epilogue because I'm not Satan. We just have brunch on sundays.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The seventh part contains a scene that involves the Turning/violation of a child. If that squicks you out, feel free to skip/skim. :)

_“All children, except one, grow up._

_They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!’_

_This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.”_

_-“Peter Pan”_ by J.M. Barrie

 

 

  
Roger thought he knew love.

Thought he had enough of it in his life.

But then the late seventies brought him Robbie, Mikey, Lo and Jimmy.

His love grew so much stronger, so much bigger, for lack of a better term.

Success with Queen was all well and good, playing with the band, playing with his lovers. Having a big house and a lush sprawling garden for all of them, a menagerie of cats. Parties, touring the world, recording and performing the music that they all loved. It was what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

But those babies stole his heart, the soft heart of a monster that beat too fast in his chest.

Suddenly he was their _Unca’ Roggie_ or just their _Froggie_ or _Frog_.

A sweet little name that Robbie had coined with that lisping little tongue of his, and that he’d instilled into every Queen child that came after him.

The babies never questioned their four fathers. Just how they never questioned why Roger had red eyes or fangs that tickled when he kissed them. They just knew that their family was big and full of love. That was all that mattered.

It was also the beginning of the end.

The inevitable had begun.

He took the babies out to a 24-hour bookstore one night.

Robbie, Mikey and Jimmy chattering to him in the half make-believe language of children, about everything and anything at all. So excited to be up past their bedtimes. _(Not that bedtimes were ever really enforced in their house. Not when Roger was home and they knew that they could always sneak over to his part of the house and snuggle up with their Froggie)._

All they needed to say was, _“Frog, I can’t sleep…”_ Looking as pitiful as could be. And suddenly Roger would spend the rest of his night with a little limpet attached to his hip.

He was rocking little Lo with one arm in a soft plush chair and reading the boys, crammed in all around him, a rousing rendition of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.

Poignant, reading the story of a child caught _‘Betwixt-and-Between’._

A boy who would never grow up.

Considering all that happened next.

The woman was an old grandmotherly sort, the kind who likely only meant well with her comments. It was nothing he hadn’t heard before anyhow, but he’d still been reeling from Freddie’s new Castro Clone look. Realizing that the years were slipping by him like sand in an hourglass. Deaky had the beginnings of early gray around his temples, deepening crows-feet around his eyes. Bri had more lines around his mouth than before and Fred had put on a fair bit of weight, giving him a little paunch and more rounded cheeks to compliment the mustache.

They were still youthful of course, still the same partners he’d fallen in love with nearly a decade prior. But they were men, now. Well into their thirties, just as he was. He loved them more with every passing day, he thought their aging made them even more exquisite, delectable, it was his own visage he had the problem with.

He was still a teenager. In the dozens of beautiful sketches Freddie had done of him over the years, some of them replacing his blurred form on album covers, he’d never changed.

His partners were _men_ and he still looked like a _boy._

_How long until they grew tired of him?_

Tired of bedding a forever young man, who never changed, who never aged as they did. Time was only a blessing when it affected all lovers, not just most.

_How long until they looked at him and saw a memory?_

_A child?_

“Oh, how sweet.” The frail elderly woman had cooed, looking over at him and the babies in his lap. “Reading to your little brothers and sister, aren’t you a dear? Are your parents here? They really shouldn’t allow you little ones up so late…”

He was stricken.

That night he took a pair of silver-edged scissors and hacked off his long trademark blonde locks, until they fell in a halo of shame around his bare feet. He could change that much. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something.

He also turned around and slammed those scissors into the wall so hard, they got stuck in all the way to the hilt.

Then he hit his knees, face buried in his hands.

  
-X-

  
Her name was Dominique, _Dom_ , and she knew he was part-vampire from the very first moment she laid eyes on him.

She’d sauntered over to him with her jet black hair swaying, a lovely french song in her words, and a short velvet skirt brushing the tops of her thighs. But that first night, all they did was talk.

And she let him drink from her.

Offering it up, without him having to take it.

Her birth-parents had been Helsings, the closest his kind had to hunters of the supernatural, she already knew about vampires. More than he had told the band, more than he had ever told anyone. She already knew and learned what she could about dhampirs from him. She was beautiful, exquisite like a night orchid, and after he took her to his bed on that second night, she told him her secret.

“I don’t want a boyfriend, Roger. I don’t want a husband. I’m content with just this. If you’re okay with it…”

He’d been confused. “The blood and the sex?”

“I don’t do romance,” She whispered somewhere into his chest. “This is all I need. A friend, a lover, not a boyfriend or a husband. Do you…?” _Understand._

“Yes.”

Dom became one of his closest confidantes and friends, she would let him feed from her and he would let her take out her sexual frustrations on him. A happy symbiotic mutualistic relationship that in no way infringed on his relationship with Freddie, Deaky and Bri. They were different. Dom was something special and he loved her. But he wasn’t _in love_ with her.

She wasn’t _in love_ with him either. She loved him sure, but being _in love_ was a feeling she didn’t experience. She had no sense of romantic attraction and that was just that. _Dom was Dom._

She moved into his bit of the house. Around the same time Mary moved out and Freddie’s various flings started cycling through.

Around the same time he started to genuinely worry about Freddie, a sentiment shared by Deaky and Bri.

When things started to go downhill on Roger’s primary relationship front, Dom discovered another little problem of her own.

A curve to her abdomen where there hadn’t been any before. A missed period and an intense need to consume the packets of raw bloody meat, that she’d just bought at the grocery.

_Fuck._

  
-X-

  
She told him at the studio.

Even though he already knew something was off, because of her heartbeat.

It was _muffled._ …Because there were two hearts beating inside of her. One, as human and steadfast as could be. The other, an unborn baby with vampiric blood and a heart beating just as fast as his own, hidden just beneath her skin.

History had repeated itself. He was left to face the fact that he’d perpetrated the same sins as his father. Damning an innocent through his own sheer stupidity alone. He should never have had sex with a human woman, never should’ve had sex period. He should’ve just stayed in the backwoods of Romania hunting down virgins and livestock like a proper vampire. Instead, his mistakes were going to get Dom killed.

“Love, we don’t even know if its viable. It might not live outside the womb,” That heartbeat was like a sledgehammer in his head. “Giving birth to it could kill you.”

But she was stubborn. Strong stubborn Dom. It was why she was part of his life at all.

“This is our baby, Rog. And vampire or not, human or not, I am a mother and this is my child.”

Determined, unshakeable in the face of a birth no one had ever encountered before.

When he’d told his bandmates, his lovers, husbands in all but name, they’d been so excited.

Then he’d explained the problems, why he wasn’t happy with the prospect of a part-vampire child being born from Dom’s small fragile human body. Why he could barely go more than a few minutes without searching out her heartbeat or that of their child. They left him to get drunk by himself after baring his soul _(the one folklore said he didn’t possess),_ not that drinking had ever really worked for him anyhow. Alcohol would give him a nice buzz, for the good two minutes before his metabolism burned through it like wildfire. That one hurt. It was as if one mistake meant that they didn’t give a shit about his problems anymore.

A monster making other monsters.

Until he remembered just who his amazing partners were.

He found John and Freddie making a separate nursery.

One that was sunlight-proof, just like his part of the house. The walls painted with glo-paint so that their tiny part-vampire wouldn’t be in complete darkness. It was as if Freddie had dug up every color imaginable, to paint a mural with a soft glow and illuminate the canopy crib John had built by hand. Stenciled with little bats, black cats and pumpkins hanging above as a mobile.

“It’s _aesthetic_ , darling.” Freddie had cooed.

Only silenced by the violent way Roger had attacked that paint-stained mouth.

Oh well, fucking on the floor of his future child’s nursery was one way to break it in. (At least their spunk didn’t glow in the dark).

Brian, on the other hand, spent days upon days going through musty old books on vampire folklore, some in different languages, to try and find some basis for a part-vampire’s birth. As well as reading some general birthing manuals.

“I assumed, since Dom can’t give birth in a hospital, that we’d be doing it ourselves.”

_We._

Roger snogged him so hard between the stacks in the library that his fangs almost split Bri’s bottom lip in two.

  
Brian was holding one of the musty old books from the library, one he’d probably borrowed without permission. Using it to nudge Freddie’s shoulder half-a-dozen times, trying to get the sleepy lump on their couch to move over and look at them.

“Freddie, could you read this for us? Does it mention anything about the children of vampires?”

Their diva frontman groaned and rolled over, pouting something fierce. “What darling, have you lost the ability to read? To see? Why does it have to be me?”

“I can’t read Hindi and I can’t find a reliable dictionary for this dialect.”

Freddie rolled his eyes. “I can’t read _Hindi!”_

They just stared at him.

“Ugh, okay fine! _I can_ read Hindi, give it here.”

He snatched the book out of Brian’s hands and ran his fingers over the title, flipping through few pages and mouthing the words to himself as he went. Before shaking his head and snapping it closed once more.

“Loves, I don’t know who told you this book was about vampires, but they were wrong. Bloody liars. It’s about vetala. These horrendously ugly ghoulish things, spirits that inhabit the bodies of the dead and drain the life force of humans by sucking their… _Oh_.”

Freddie scowled. “Darling, are you lot _everywhere?”_

Roger snorted.

Nuzzling his face into Freddie’s plush side. He smelt like Brian’s favorite soap, the kind their uppity guitarist never let them touch, the bloody thief. _“Lamashtu, Strigoï, Alukah, Shtriga, Vykolakas, Moroi_ …it goes on and on. Every culture has their own rendition of us.”

“Which one’s correct?”

Brimi, ever the scientist. Trying to accurately quantify vampires of all things.

Rog used his foot and ankle to hook around the lanky noodle’s waist and drag him closer.

“None of them, Bri. You’ll have to write a new rendition.”

Suddenly Roger’s lap was full of dark curls and soft skin, how Brimi managed to fortune-cookie twist and bend himself to fit was beyond the dhampir’s scope of understanding. Not that he was opposed in any way.

“I can’t.” His fuzzy darling hummed. “It would be biased. You can’t write objectively about the things you love.”

  
-X-

  
The birth of _Felix Luther Taylor_ nearly killed his human mother.

  
The newborn tore his way out, unbeknownst to the horror he was wreaking on her fragile mortal body.

Any doubt of the strength of his tiny son’s vampiric blood was assuaged the very moment he came en caul with full vampiric features.

A horrifying bat-like face identical to Roger’s own, once the lingering amniotic sac had been tugged away (he ate it afterwards. Not for any greater significance other than the fact that he was hungry and why the bloody fuck not?).

The mewling little boy had a thatch of Dom’s midnight hair standing up ramrod straight on the top of his head, one eye was Roger’s bloody crimson and one a milky blind cerulean blue. His skin was pale, his chubby cheeks dimpled and when Roger listened he could hear a tiny heart beating identically to his own in speed and ferocity.

 _Felix Luther Taylor_ , his Romanian name a series of harsh syllables and words that curled up at the ends, _(Mircea Vladimir Ionuț. Close enough to his own for Roger to be a namesake_ ) was born damned.

His first blood came from his sire, Roger’s blood tears inadvertently whetting the boy’s lips as they fell unheeded. A foreshadowing of the sorrowful life to come.

Dom lost her ability to bear anymore children after that night.

Roger carried her into A&E after the birth, both of them dripping in what seemed like a gallon of her blood and him babbling some nonsense about a stillbirth or a late-term miscarriage. Dom had looked like a corpse in her billowy white nightie. His Mina. No, his Lucy. The very thought made him a new kind of ill.

The doctors had to remove whatever shreds of tissue remained of her uterus, Felix had honestly torn his way out.

Roger was simply overjoyed when she lasted the night. Things were horrendously touch-and-go for quite a while.

They resigned themselves to never having anymore children.

Of course, barely a year later, they would adopt a human baby girl with flyaway white-gold curls and big soulful green eyes. Rory Eleanor Taylor _(Iulia Lacramioara Tait),_ who learned the skills of a Helsing at the behest of Dom, who was pressing a dull practice-stake into their daughter’s small pudgy hands as soon as she could stand unaided.

Little Rory became Felix’s _Clare_.

Roger wondered when his father’s sins had become his own and when those would become Felix’s.

In the end though, Rory’s lessons became a bit of a family PSA.

His baby girl in his lap as he pulled out the wooden box he’d kept under his bed for years. Making sure she was focused on it as he tugged out a heavy silver howdah pistol. Holding it in his gloved hands, testing the weight before passing it onto their eldest, Robbie. Who looked down at it like some sort of ancient relic.

“What’s this Froggie?”

It wasn’t loaded and there were no special bullets inside, so he wasn’t worried as Robbie played around with it. Looking it over with a furrowed brow, gnawing on his bottom lip.

“ _A howdah pistol?”_ Freddie sounded aghast from where he sat in Deaky’s lap. Given that it was family meeting time, everyone was spread around in various states of undress. “A _silver_ howdah pistol?”

Shit. He kept forgetting that Freddie spent much of his boyhood in India.

Howdah pistols were often used for protection from big game, like tigers, in the jungles of India and Africa, howdah being the name for the platform saddle on the back of an elephant. They were old though, 19th century pistols that had gone out of fashion quite a while ago. They were so old that he was surprised Freddie knew enough about them to recognize one on sight.

“I keep forgetting about that boarding school in Bombay.” Roger sighed, a fond smile on his lips.

Freddie didn’t smile back, instead he slid off the couch and his Deaky love-seat to come and tug it from Robbie’s grip. “Darling, why do you have this?”

Roger nervously nicked the inside of his cheek with a misplaced fang.

“Fred, I have an old pure silver pistol and heavy rounds made of the right wood for vampire slaying, covered in a silver coating so they stay together after being shot.” He sounded raw and he couldn’t meet his lover’s eyes, simply took one of Freddie’s hand into his own with his head bowed. “Love, there are a dozen reasons why…”

And he certainly wasn’t going to say them with their _babies being right there._

Their Deaky came up behind Freddie to take the pistol into his own hands.

“Well, you don’t get this back until you share.”

He tugged off his sunglasses, crimson eyes narrowing. “With our _whelps_ here?” He hissed, fangs bared and vampiric features on display. Neither was very impressed by the show.

In fact, Freddie bent forwards to press a delicate whiskery kiss to Roger’s prominent bat nose.

“I absolutely love your little pig nose, its so soft, darling.”

God, these idiots. His _beautiful_ idiots.

“I’m a bloodthirsty killer.” He growled, in a tonal reserve that was the complete opposite to the pitch he took while singing. When he sounded like a synth or a guitar.

Brimi rolled his eyes, “Sure you are, Roggie. Still doesn’t mean you get that back without a long talk.”

The long talk happened later, after he’d trained the children on how to hold and shoot the pistol, how to load its rounds and where to aim for. “The place where two roads meet. It’s the same for every damned creature.” He had instructed, pointing out the place on his own chest for the pistol to rest.

“It’s for the children.” He whispered into Deaky's sternum that coming sunrise, when he was drifting off and they would spend the next few hours slumbering together, before going into the studio. “If something happens, if a vamp comes for them… They need to be able to keep themselves safe. The same goes for you three. I have pistols and rounds for you lot too. A whole lot of deadly stuff under the bed in a latched suitcase, just in case I can’t protect you.”

_No, not if he couldn’t protect them._

_He would protect them till his dying breath._

_If they ever needed those guns, he would already be torn to pieces, deader than dead._

“It’ll be alright, lovie.” Freddie whispered into that blonde white-gold mess on his head. “We’ll all be alright.” He hummed in response, snuggling closer.

“…There’s something _else,_ isn’t there?”

John’s voice was sad. Like he already knew.

Bri’s hand stilled on his back.

“I needed a way out.” The words were heavy in their honesty. “In case I ever lost control, you could end me. Or if…” He swallowed so hard that his body shook. “…if eternity becomes too much, I have a way out.”

“ _Roger.”_ Brian sounded wrecked. The dhampir kept his eyes closed so he wouldn’t have to see any of his lovers’ faces in the lowlight.

Freddie’s breath sounded so rough in his chest. Deaky was trembling beneath him in the silence.

Roger pushed them all away in one fell swoop and sat up in their king-sized bed, arms wrapped tightly around himself, gripping hard enough to bruise, with bloody tears of shame coursing unheeded down his cheeks.

“ _I know_ , alright!?” He snapped. _“I know. But you don’t_. One day, you're all gonna die.” The words he had tried to put off saying aloud for so long. “You’re all gonna die, and I’ll be alone. The children will all grow old and die, poor Felix will watch them. His brothers and sisters dying, leaving him behind. We’ll watch together as every generation bleeds away into the next.”

Felix had every right to despise him for the suffering that was to come.

Roger let out a maddened hysterical laugh that shook his insides.

“Loving mortals is like loving a clutch of pretty flowers in a garden, they all wither away and die eventually. Whether you want them to or not. But you live on, in some sort of mockery of a false god.”

“Love,” Freddie was reaching for him, always there, always reaching out. “You could always _Turn_ us? You offered before?”

Roger thought of Brian, their sensitive vegetarian Brian who cried when he saw animal carcasses on the highway from hit-and-runs. Their Brimi couldn’t survive having to sap the life-force of living things for all eternity. Or their Freddie who couldn’t survive an endless night, he was an artist, losing those genuine colors forever with his own eyes would hurt him in ways that Roger didn’t want to think about. And Deaky, their Deaky, who only ever wanted a normal boring life, apple pies and white picket fences, could never have that normalcy as a creature of darkness.

“I changed my mind. It’s probably not even possible for me to _Turn_ anyone and besides, it’s not a life I want for any of you.”

He’d thought once, that Turning was akin to saving. But it wasn’t. Not by a long shot.

Their bedside lamp switched on and suddenly the bedroom was flooded with false light.

Deaky looked livid.

“Since when do you get to decide shit for us, hm? We aren’t your property! You don’t get to decide what’s best for us like we’re children or invalids! …In fact,” Deaky’s voice hit that cruel pitch again, a slave to his own powerful emotions. “…why should we take orders from you when you’re acting like a _pathetic, spoiled little boy!?”_

_An errant child._

It wasn’t a fight like the little spats they often had in the studio, when Roger would whine and piss around as Bri or Freddie ripped their hair out in clumps. Or when Bri and Fred would go at it so loudly that it could only end with them snogging the hell out of each other. While Roger and Deaky had situations straining in their too-tight pants.

This fight was different.

This fight ended with Roger saying nothing. Merely sliding off the bed and wrapping a silky robe around himself.

“I think I’ll sleep somewhere else tonight.”

His voice was soft and oh so small.

“ _Roggie_ …”

Not even Freddie could lure him back this time.

  
-X-

  
Things were rocky between them for a good while after that.

Well, until the bloody clusterfuck that was _Bill Reid_ came into the picture.

Their _Hot Space_ era was a fucking mess.

It left them fractured and upset with each other. Maybe it was working in Munich, maybe it was the partying and the drugs and the time away from their house and full-sized loving family. Or maybe it was the fact that they were growing apart in other ways.

He loved his boys more than ever, but sometimes it felt like Freddie and John were the only partners of that time in their lives, along with whatever fuck-buddy Freddie maintained for the night or a couple of weeks. It was all a hot destructive mess.

Bri hated the album, Roger hated himself, Deaky hated Roger and Freddie hated the tension between them all. Needing to escape into the Munich nightlife for the sole purpose of hiding away from their empty bed.

Bill Reid was the breaking point.

Roger could put up with a lot of things from the men Freddie chose to bring around. But someone physically hurting their darling, their Freddie, was out of the question.

It happened in their dressing room before Milton Keynes.

The two of them were off arguing about something or another, poor Phoebe was trying to help Freddie get dressed, while their Persian prince made things awfully difficult by stopping every few moments to hurl an insult over his gentle live-in PA’s shoulder at Reid.

Roger was trying to warm-up on the couch, tip-tapping away on his legs, spats between Freddie and ‘the boyfriends’ happened so often that the sound of one didn’t even phase him anymore.

But the slap, the one that snapped Freddie’s head to the side with an audible crack, so hard Roger that felt it in his own teeth, made him freeze in shock.

Eyes turned feral and calculating within moments, seeing the scene play out in slow-motion before him.

Their lover was no pushover, not in their relationship or any outside of it, and he attempted to slap Reid in return, teeth bared in a snarl he must’ve learned from Roger, only for the disgustingly bigger man to catch his delicate hand and bite into it, enough to draw crimson blood and tear something important.

Freddie _screamed,_ a sound of genuine shock and pain, stumbling back with his hand cradled against his chest, tears bubbling in his eyes. Everything was red.

Roger moved.

It was out of his control. Like the vampire part of him had taken over once more, driving him and throwing the human part ass-over-elbows into the backseat.

Actually, it would probably be more apt to say he attacked.

The war cry that exploded from his chest was something inhuman and he was across the room in a single bound, one clawed hand wrapped around Reid’s throat to crush his windpipe and slam him against the wall, Roger quite nearly snapped the man’s neck with the force of it.

The beast inside him roared and he did little to quiet it.

Freddie’s blood was smeared across the terrified human asshole’s mouth. The sight of it only enraged the beast inside him. The beast he had become.

He could see Reid’s mouth moving, those bloodied lips whispering some exclamation of shock or apology, or maybe he was whimpering, struggling to breathe. Roger didn’t care. Roger couldn’t hear him.

All he could hear was the pounding of his own heart in his head.

He was furious, he was hungry, and he wanted to tear the prey in front of him into pieces. A savage beast in an abattoir.

He only realized how hard he was holding Reid and how high off the floor they were, until the man’s eyes bulged from his head and his mouth frothed with blood that looked remarkably like shaken cherry soda bubbles.

They were at least six feet high, Roger’s chokehold effectively hanging the man. He was levitating with his feet curled under him, instinct taking over.

_Fuck._

_**“Roger!”** _

The cry that snapped him out of his feral protectiveness didn’t come from one of his lovers. It didn’t come from Dom.

It came from _Phoebe_ of all people.

 _Peter “Phoebe” Freestone_ , Freddie’s long-standing PA with the most amazing band idiocy and Freddie’s general bitchiness threshold that Roger had ever encountered.

A soft-spoken man with a cocoa warm smile and kind demeanor that just oozed oodles of compassion and love.

A bleeding heart with an everlasting patience. Roger had never seen the man raise his voice at anything. Ever. Not once in all the years he’d toured with them or lived with them at Freddie’s behest.

Phoebe’s out-of-character howl had been enough to shake Roger back into his right mind and he dropped Reid. Let the asshole fall the floor, crying and gasping for air with his raw throat inflamed.

“Are you alright?!”

Phoebe’s frantic question was directed at him. Not at the asshole he’d nearly eaten just moments before or Freddie who was bleeding profusely into John’s spare shirt, but him.

He just blinked, distracted by the heady scent of nature. Phoebe smelled like dew. He smelled of moss on tree branches and the whisper of a summer rainstorm high up in the mountains.

Roger pulled away from the delicate hands and made a beeline for Freddie, eyes turned hazy.

Their frontman was trembling, staring down at the way his bloody hand was soaking through Deaky’s t-shirt.

Bri was standing in front of the couch protectively, holding one of his clogs as a makeshift weapon. Which may have sounded stupid, but that thing was like a mallet when swung and would leave even Roger seeing stars after a direct hit.

For one sickening moment, he was scared that Brian was protecting their partners from him, until Brimi’s free arm wrapped around his waist and tugged him into that bony pigeon chest. “God, Roggie are you alright? We couldn’t get you to snap out of it, it was like you were _gone…_ ” He relished in his lover’s hold for a moment, inhaling that intoxicating scent. Before trying to wiggle out to get to Freddie.

But instead of letting him go, Brian half-carried him over and they both pressed in on their injured lover, four heads bowed together in absolution.

Roger gently pulled the tacky shirt _(both in style and from the blood)_ away from Freddie’s wound. Fuck.

“Love, I think this is going to fancy some stitches and a fair bit of antiseptic… You need hospital, Fred, I don’t want to hurt you by accident if I try it myself…”

Their Persian prince shook his head, complete with those glassy eyes. “We’re on in a few, Roggie. We don’t have any more time. You do it, I love you.” Love meant trust in Freddie’s eyes. Deaky and Bri seemed to respect that as well, nodding their heads. Even Phoebe, who appeared at their side and who all of this was _new_ for, was holding out a first-aid kit long before Roger asked for it. He had nearly torn a man’s throat out in front of them, and they were already that desensitized to it?

“Fred, you shouldn’t _perform_ like this, love. You're _hurting._ ”  
  
He chastised softly as he delicately stitched up the trembling hand in front of him. Numbing it with whatever he was able to find in their surprisingly thorough first-aid kit.

But of course, Freddie didn’t give a rat’s ass about what they told him not to do.

He would be performing that night, one way or another.

He proclaimed so multiple times, and short of bungee-tying their rapscallion to the couch, Roger couldn’t do much more than bitch about it.

“ _W-What the fuck are you?!”_

A voice rasped out, causing them all to look back at the horrified, pasty white visage of Bill Reid, supporting himself on the wall, eyes red rimmed and utterly terrified as he pointed a finger at Roger. Who rolled his crimson eyes to heaven.

“Y-You’re a fucking _monster! A demon from the bloody gates a hell!”_

Roger just continued bandaging Freddie’s hand. Not giving a single fuck.

Phoebe leaned in close and rested his hand on Freddie’s uninjured one. “Freddie, don’t worry, I’ll take out _the trash.”_ A little twitch of a smile.

Roger blinked curiously. Phoebe had been living with them and in proximity to them for a handful of years now, but they’d never actually _explained_ the half-vampire thing to him. Not how they’d explained to the wives and Crystal. Even Ratty. Yet he seemed to have taken it frighteningly well. _Too well._

The docile young man walked towards Reid’s frenzied form, the terrified larger man whipping what looked like a pocketknife he’d dredged from his boot, back and forth like he thought it would protect him. Phoebe raised his hands delicately, harmlessly as he stepped closer to the other man and that’s when Roger realized that Freddie’s long-standing PA was anything but.

 _“Mr. Reid,”_ He was always so cordial with Freddie’s boyfriends, even the utter arseholes. “I would _suggest_ putting that away and leaving. Hurting Freddie because you’re a jealous, vengeful little prick will never be tolerated here. Nor will calling Roger a _monster. One_ , because it’s awfully rude, and _two_ , because it just isn’t true.”

“He tried to _kill_ me!” The red-faced man yowled as Phoebe attempted to shepherd him towards the door.

“Oh no, dear. He would have very much killed you. I’ve seen enough angry vampires to know exactly what he would’ve done to you. But, he wouldn’t have enjoyed killing you. Ergo, _not_ a monster.” A small wicked smile spread over the PA’s soft features. _“I,_ on the other hand, would’ve _loved_ it.”

Reid froze. Roger smiled, eyes widening as he realized. _(And kicked himself for not realizing sooner. That fucking smell should’ve tipped him off)._

Phoebe was closing in on Reid, who had stopped inching towards the door.

“Let me give you a little lesson on _lycanthropes_ , Mr. Reid.” Dull brown eyes turned a glowing golden. “You don’t hurt the members of a _lycanthrope’s pack_ , or they will relish tearing you limb from fucking limb.”

“… _Lycanthrope?”_

The man whispered, in a voice that was rawer than before, if that was even possible.

“ _Werewolf_ , in layman’s terms.” Phoebe growled, still smiling, only this time it included a multitude of razor-sharp canines, glinting in the false light.

Roger had never seen a human being run so fucking fast.

“Phoebe… _how long?”_

Freddie sounded aghast and the PA shrugged. “I was bitten at sixteen. I’ve been a lycan the whole time you’ve known me.” A little chuckle. “Didn’t you notice I only ever take three days off a month? Before the full moon, the full moon and after.”

“You never said…”

An incredulous grunt, “I never thought I _needed_ to. You share your bed with a vampire, I’d assumed Roger knew and told you all.”

Roger shook his head. “I’ve never met a lycanthrope. I don’t know the smell. And I’m only half-vampire, born this way.” Just in time to watch Phoebe’s eyes practically bulge out of his head.

“That’s possible?! I thought vampires couldn’t _have_ children!”

Roger laughed, shaking his towhead. “Well we _can_ , that’s how Felix exists. _Should we?_ Probably not. I think I’m the only dhampir who’s ever lived this long. But I’m still going, so?” A shrug.

Phoebe smiled. “A _dhampir?_ That’s what you call yourself?”

“Yes. I assume you prefer _lycanthrope?”_

A nod.

“Lycanthrope it is.”

  
-X-

  
“You didn’t get a choice then, if you were born like this?”

Phoebe would ask him later, as they sat together, side by side.

Sure they were eating chunks of raw bloody meat and strips of uncooked bacon from the fridge, both that they’d tossed into a popcorn bowl for the sake of normalcy, but that wasn’t the issue at hand.

“No, I didn’t. Did _you?”_

Roger raised those crimson eyes to see the sad smile twitch to life on Phoebe’s lips.

“No. But _my Maker_ did save my life. I suppose I owe her that.”

The younger man reached up to rub at a spot on his wrist and a circular scar hidden under his clothing. The only scar a lycanthrope’s body could hold. The scar of The Bite.

“My sire gave me a life too, damned or not.”

Roger sighed, staring down at his own hands. His resentment had mellowed in recent years, maybe one day he would actually want to see the monster again.

  
-X-

  
Roger buried his mother on an evening so overcast, that he didn’t have to fully cover-up before dark.

The woman who had raised him, loved him before it all, the woman who had risked her own life bringing him into the world, risked her sanity by loving him. That woman was being lowered in a glossy mahogany casket, down down down into the calm quiet earth. Her soul gone to a place where he could never ever follow.

He was flanked by his children, those who called him Froggie and those who called him Daddy. The men he loved more than life itself, as well as the men and women he considered family. They all came that day. Clare crying into his chest as her husband and children stood guard around her. He wasn’t sure how much they knew about him, but they knew not to question it regardless.

The service was brief and painful, and he honestly thought it would kill him for a moment there. Worse than a bloody stake in the heart.

His eyes strayed past the sobbing masses of those who didn't really know his mother and the silent tears and broken-hearted stares of those who did. To rest on a boy who stood a few gravestones away.

A black umbrella obscured his face and he stood dressed in blatantly non-funeral attire.

He was wearing a black crop-top covered in safety pins reminiscent of Sid Vicious’ lapels in 1977, red leather skinny jeans that denoted youth and left little to the imagination. A belly-button piercing and converse shoes. A black widow’s peak when he got closer, a curly ponytail and button-nose.

A old killer with the face of a child. He knew the sentiment well enough.

“You didn’t change her.”

His tone wasn’t accusing, when they finally stood and stared at one another, crimson eyes to crimson eyes.

“No.” The vampire’s tone was light, melodious. A teenager’s voice with an otherworldly exhausted undercurrent that made Roger almost pity the boy before him. “She never wanted this life.”

“You never gave me the choice.”

“Nor did you give your own son.”

Roger’s eyes widened. “You know?”

His father, not his sire, smiled. “Of course. I pled his case for you.”

Roger shook his head as if to clear it. “You didn’t have to do that.”

The vampire simply shrugged, turning away as if to leave, but not before reaching out to touch his son’s hand, for just a moment. “I never left, Meddows. You may not have seen me, but I _never_ left your side.”

He didn’t know if it was his father’s touch or if it was the dark gift affecting its chosen in different ways, but it was like he saw through his father’s eyes for an instant. Yet he didn’t see himself, or his mother. He saw his father’s _Turning_.

  
A small eleven-year-old boy thrown into a dark dank chamber under the earth, filled with corpses still strung up in various torture apparatuses, clinging to his little brother Radu for dear life. Taken from their father and older brother Mircea, both who would be later murdered by the Hungarians in cold blood, they were to be trained as child soldiers by the Turks.

The tinier boy was crying, Vlad tried to comfort him, whispering soft nothings in the soft-spoken tongue of their birth. _I won’t ever leave you, Radu. I won’t ever leave your side. I promise, I will find a way to get us home again._

Until the dark thing came from the shadows.

It held him down and took everything from him. His purity, his humanity.

He only screamed for Radu to look away, to cover his eyes as it took advantage of him, his youth, his blood, his body.

He made a very good, very bloodthirsty soldier after that. A soldier grown in a day, a soldier who would never die, forever a youthful boy at his prime, despite never reaching that age as a human.

Old blood did that.

Vampiric blood got diluted as it passed down in repeated Turnings, freezing those at the moment they were turned as the limits of its power to manipulate age. But the blood from the thing in the shadows was new. Perhaps that was what made the ancients like him unique.

His name was even more fitting then. Dracul, _son of the dragon._

_Son of the Devil._

_For what else could that creature have been, but damnation incarnate?_

  
Roger pulled away with a gasp.

Shaking, tears burning in his eyes.

“What did you see!?” The vampire looked stricken, horrified. “I am so sorry Meddows, I did not know that was going to happen, I…”

“You didn’t get a choice either, did you?”

Roger felt sick with how naive he’d been. The vampire said nothing and made no more moves towards him. Shielding his eyes once more as he turned away from it all. Lost in a haze of his own grief once again. What an awful life his father must have lived. This was no sire. This was a tortured immortal child.

“I’d like to bring my family to Romania. Could we stay in the castle sometime?”

The creature paused. “It is your castle. I left it for you long ago.”

“Will you be there? …I’d like for everyone to meet you, even if now isn’t the time.”

Vlad looked at his son with new life in his very old eyes.

“ _I can be._ ”

  
-X-

  
Something was _wrong_ with Freddie.

Even as he found Jim and started to settle down with them again.

Jim, a gentle Irishman with two hearts. One of gold that he’d given to Freddie… then given to all of them after a time. And one that belonged to the salty Irish sea, one that had always possessed a sort of otherworldly magic. Jim had looked at Roger and Phoebe with such fear at first and then with a sort of brotherly love. A love great enough for him to put aside his love for his real home and be part of their messy little family. A family that just kept on growing.

It didn’t take a genius for the two other supernatural creatures, and even for Dom, to realize that there was something different about Jim.

The way he would hum under his breath as he worked with wood in the garage, the constant smell of sand and sea that stuck to his skin and hair. The webbing between his fingers and toes, and the locked chest with an old fur coat inside, that he’d buried beneath the azaleas in the garden. The way he would always sway when standing still, as if rocked by invisible ocean waves.

Seamus Hutton wasn’t _human_ , perhaps that was just the sort Freddie tended to attract. But they grew to love him anyway.

The man who wasn’t really a man.

The selkie who had found a human lover in their Freddie. Who loved him as much as they did. Enough to give up what he was for a chance to be on land with their Persian prince. If only he knew what Jim had given up for him…

  
Roger climbed into the shower one evening, Bri and Deaky only too happy to join him there. But Freddie had uncharacteristically shaken his head, mumbling something about being too tired to mess about and wanting to go to bed. Of course they had let him go, worried as though they were.

Things only got more worrying as time passed, everyone noticed the way Freddie just seemed off.

It came to a head when Freddie stopped eating with them.

Always giving some excuse of not being hungry or having already eaten, when Roger, Jim and Phoebe could all pointedly hear his poor stomach growling away.

Everyone in the bloody world knew Freddie was hopeless in the kitchen, so he couldn’t have made himself something either. They worried for their darling. Who was suddenly more tired than normal, having to take breaks sitting with the cats in the garden or having to clutch onto a solid surface when his vision grew hazy and dim.

Roger may have had the visage of a youth, but he was a grown goddamn man and was not pussyfooting around any issues with his partners anymore.

He cornered Freddie in the bathroom.

Fresh out of a shower, alone (that would never have happened before) and their Persian prince even jumped in surprise instead of happiness when he saw Roger leaning against the doorframe, rushed to cover himself. Like that body could hold any secrets for the dhampir. That body he’d lavished love and affection on for more than a decade.

“Oh darling, I’ve just finished, go on ahead!”

As if he really thought Roger was waiting for the shower.

“ _Freddie, come here.”_

He gently took hold of his partner’s wrist and tugged him close. Close enough that he could hear the sad growl of Freddie’s stomach and see the sickly paleness of his face. The feral part of him was pacing angrily, berating him for not being able to provide for his lover. Their frontman was trembling slightly, like his legs didn’t want to hold him up.

“What’s going _on_ with you, love?”

He knew he sounded blunt and petulant, but he was worried dammit and sick of that fake smile on Freddie’s pretty pouty lips.

“Nothing, Roggie. Please… I’ve got to get _dressed_ …” Attempting to sidestep his way out of the situation. Roger wouldn’t let him.

“You haven’t been _eating_ and I want to know _why.”_

Freddie went stiff, rolling his eyes like a horse about to be put down. Roger still wouldn't let him go.

It took a long time to win that answer, but eventually it came.

“You know as well as I do, darling…” He just sounded so defeated. “I’ve always been ugly, but now I’m _old and fat_ too. Nothing I can do about being ugly and old, but I don’t have to be fat. I’m just not trying hard enough to be thinner.” _Better. More desirable. I’ve let myself go._

Roger’s voice was tight just like his jaw as he whispered. “Not eating won’t make you _thinner,_ it’ll make you _deader_ … Fred, lovie, if you’re worried about being healthy then there are constructive ways to eat better, just talk to Bri about his tofu salads and shit. But you already eat just fine and you most certainly aren’t fat, or ugly or even old! Jesus _Christ, Freddie_ …”

His heart felt like it was being squeezed in a vice.

“You don’t need to lie to me, Roggie. I can look in the fucking mirror.”

So resigned.

“Well _so can I!_ And I don’t see any of it!” He squawked, indignant as all hell as he gripped Freddie’s hips, hands slotting into place just as well as they always had, as he picked up his insecure lover, towel and all and sat him up on the bathroom counter. The physically older man yelped and blinked in surprise.

“Light as ever, love. Would I be able to do that if you really were fat?”

“Yes,” Freddie deadpanned in a way they both knew to be true.

“Love, what brought this on? I love the way you look! Hell, I’m bloody crazy about you!”

He wanted to hold Freddie tight enough to block out everything else. Had someone said something? Freddie honestly wasn't old, he wasn’t ugly by any stretch of the imagination, and fat? Don’t make him laugh. Freddie was softer yea, but nothing even close to fat! And even if he was, Roger would love him _regardless._

He loved that idiot squish more than almost anything and anyone. _(Well, not more than Bri and Deaky, his heart had just grown to accommodate them all)._

The thought that Freddie didn’t love himself was breaking his heart.

“ _You, Roggie_.” Roger felt his heart stutter. “Brian and John, they don’t care as much, I know they don’t mind how I look… It’s a little bit of an unspoken agreement actually.” A sad little smile. “They don’t see my weight and I don’t see Deaky’s wrinkles or the gray in Bri’s hair. They’re worlds better than me, but it’s doable. Roggie, you… You’re just going to _leave_ us.”

Roger just gaped. Silent for an inordinate amount of time before he could rasp out a rough: **_“What?”_**

“God, Roggie! Don’t you get it?!” Freddie tried to wiggle away but Roger wasn’t having it, still frozen with shock. “One day you’re going to wake up next to three old ladies in your bed, dentures and rheum and bifocals and countless boring old drugs. You’re going to shake us awake and say: _‘Well, it’s been grand, loves. But you’ve all got one foot in the grave now, time to trade up, you understand?’_. And off you’ll go to find a collection of new young rockers to bugger on with.”

Freddie was tearing up, waving his hands around for emphasis like he always had.

Instead, Roger grabbed him in a kiss so violent, he felt their teeth clack together.

“How… How could you honestly _think that?_ ” The dhampir cried once he’d pulled away.

“God… I love the way you look, _Freddie Mercury_. The same way I love how Bri and Deaky look, but because they’re _them!_ I loved you as _Freddie Bulsara,_ I love you as _Freddie Mercury_ and I will love you as _Freddie Mercury-Hutton_ when Jim finally gives you a ring. I love all three of you for who you are! Not what you look like!”

He was trembling with the sheer force of it.

“Freddie, I love you _today_ , I loved you _yesterday_ , and I’ll love you _tomorrow_. And I would _never_ , in a million years, _ever_ think of leaving you. In fact…” He slumped forwards into Fred’s fluffy carpeted chest, still damp and smelling vaguely of John’s cinnamon body wash. “I’ve worried for so long that it’s gonna to be the other way around. That one day you lot would look at me and see a little boy instead of a partner, somebody you’d _out-grown, left behind.”_

Fred caught his face in those beautiful hands with a little gasp.

“Oh darling, _no!_ That could never happen, Roggie we’re bloody lost on you.”

Roger reached up to twirl a few of Freddie’s curls around his fingers, they were starting to grow out again. _Then how could you think that I wouldn’t feel the same? Oh lovie… Have I failed that badly?_

“Let’s agree to never get sick of each other, alright? My poor heart jus’ couldn’t take it, Fred.” He pouted and their Persian prince huffed a little laugh.

“Sure, darling. Whatever your heart desires.”

A familiar bassist’s voice sounded through the door with a dangerous edge to it.

“His heart desire’s is for you to _eat_ this fucking sandwich.”

Of course they were listening the whole time.

Before he leaned over to open the door, he noticed a little spot on the outside of Freddie’s shoulder. An innocuous little dark spot that was going to change all of their lives forever.

Roger ran the pad of his thumb over it. It felt just like any other mole.

“Have you always had a mole here?”

He asked softly but Freddie just shrugged, not really caring one way or another.

It was just a little mole.

  
-X-

  
But it _wasn’t._

He should have known. He should have realized.

But he _didn’t._

He knew about the new plague, the thing that the media was calling the new ‘gay cancer’ but he had never worried about Freddie getting sick, certain that they’d been together so long, they’d have to be safe. That he’d be able to smell it if worse came to worse and one of them got sick. But it was so slight at first, before everything came all at once. Even his ancient father, who met with the family when they toured in Bucharest for Roger’s 37th birthday, didn’t smell it.

It was _Phoebe_ , who finally did.

On a sunday morning, as they read the daily papers and had brekkie, the children running around underfoot, watching cartoons or acting them out with homemade paper swords and shields. Phoebe had been leaning over Freddie’s shoulder to put some overly spicy eggs on Roger’s plate _(no garlic of course)_ , when suddenly the scrambled eggs ended up in the unsuspecting dhampir’s lap.

He jumped back with a yelp, standing up to mitigate the damage and good-naturedly gripe at their makeshift chef while Joe was at the grocery.

But the look on Phoebe’s face, stopped him in his tracks. The ordinarily sweet-smiling man was frozen, staring at Freddie like he’d just seen a ghost. All of them looked over in concern, but it was like Phoebe was mentally gone.

“Feebie, love?” Freddie reached out for his PA, his brother. “Are you _alright?”_

He shook his head slowly, staring at Freddie’s shoulder of all things.

“Love, you look a tad off-color maybe you should…” Roger reached for the werewolf.

“Freddie… When’s your next GP visit?” Phoebe’s voice was pitched strangely, and he still hadn’t blinked.

Their Persian prince furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “I dunno, darling, a couple of months on?”

“Call and make an appointment for tomorrow… no, _today.”_

The werewolf was shaking, still staring at that finite point on Freddie.

“Phoebe, what’s _wrong?_ ” Roger was terrified. He felt it inside himself though. He saw it on Phoebe’s face. Written in his eyes. It was bad.

The PA’s trembling, very human hand reached out to touch a point on Freddie’s shoulder. Every eye in the room traced his movements. Roger was the only one who realized what it meant. The mole. Dark purple-red, the splotch marring that beautiful skin he’d kissed a thousand times. All of a sudden, in a sickening whirlwind, he recalled the causalities of their musical world. That small idiotic question that they’d all denied without thinking about it, when it started to appear in interviews. Is Freddie sick?

Those poor young boys he’d seen in the street with similar splotches on their skin, reedy wrists and black hole eyes.

The sickness no one understood. First, _GRID_ then _AIDS_. There was a test now.

The plague of the community they all belonged to. The one Freddie had been a greater part of. All those years they’d been fighting in Munich. All those clubs, tours and empty fucks. _Paul Goddamn Prenter._

Roger didn’t realize until he hit his knees.

He _could_ smell it.

Maybe it was his love that had prevented it for so long.

Did that mean Freddie had given it to Bri and Deaky? Had he given it to Joe or Phoebe? Was he going to die from this?

Die in his forties before ever going gray?

 _I won’t make old bones, dear. I know it._ That twinkle in his eye and sweet toothpaste smile.

No. Oh God _no._

The sound that came from him was _inhuman._

Because that was what he was, down deep inside, more _inhuman than human._

It started out like a open-mouthed moan, before deteriorating into a wordless cry that left him unable to take in any more air. Grief rendered him mute, guilt rendered him desolate.

Freddie got down on his level, face pinched in worry, Brian and John joined him, all of them reaching for him. Poor Phoebe was holding onto the marble countertop for support as he wept silently, his whole body quaking with the force of it. It was Jim who hefted him up and off the ground. One hand gently smoothing his crazy blonde hair. Jim knew too. He had to know.

A dozen voices were talking over each other, reaching out to soothe him, to help. He was still wailing, an endless keen that would’ve served him better as a banshee rather than as a dhampir.

“Fred, Fred…” Just the word alone was enough to obliterate his heart. That beautiful regal boy who had come into his life with an accidental stake and a shy little smile. “I thought I could _protect_ you.” He smiled through his bloody tears, a hand reaching up to cup that lovely soft cheek.

“I couldn’t have been more wrong. Oh, lovie…”

“ _You’re sick._ ”

  
-X-

  
“Are you _sure_ you want to do this?”

Freddie nodded, resolute as he sat cross-legged on their plush comforter. As if Roger’s question was the most preposterous thing in the whole bloody world. Of course he was doing it.

“You don’t want to wait for any treatment advances? It’s a definite possibility.”

Brimi asked quietly, even though they all knew what Freddie’s answer would be.

But he was a scientist through and through. A scientist who’d fallen in love with a creature of myth and legend. That was always the way, wasn’t it?

“No, darling. We’ve all known that this was the way it was going to end.”

As a vampire.

“We’ll love you, regardless.” Deaky promised, as if that were ever in question. Freddie leaned over and gave their bassist the slowest and sweetest kiss imaginable.

“I know, my darlings. But it’ll all be fine, you’ll see. An eternity with the loves of my life… What a bloody fine adventure.”

Roger was interrupted from his own retort, feeling vaguely ill at the thought, by a knock that announced the presence of the newest guest to their little soiree. Phoebe was sitting at the foot of the bed for moral support with Joe hovering nearby, Jim was right by Freddie’s side, as were Bri and Deaky. Lovely Dom was putting the children to bed, but he was certain she’d be in right after.

No, it was a vampire who stood outside their window, balanced daintily on the edge of the windowsill.

“You can come in, Dad!”

Roger called, opening the window with an absentminded flick of the wrist.

Vlad stepped in, dressed like an actual punk fifteen-year-old, with his coiffed hair dyed blue, a spiky dog collar around his neck and a teardrop garnet belly-button piercing. “Well that is a relief! I overshot your little island and ended up in the Faroe Islands of Iceland. Not an enjoyable flight, _guriță._ ” He flitted over and gave Roger a little pat on the cheek, before turning to Freddie.

“Do you have any questions before we begin, _Dragul meu?”_

Freddie shook his head, a few errant curls falling into his eyes, his hair was growing out again and looked bloody brilliant with his shaved face. Almost like they were young boys again.

“Well then, _happy birthday.”_

Vlad reached into his leather jacket pocket and fished out a little glossy black box. Roger stiffened and then pretended not to have done so.

“Thank you, darling, but it isn’t my birthday…”

Freddie gasped as he lifted out the dainty golden chain, on it hung a fat blue sapphire gleaming and shining in the false light. It was curved like an arrowhead or maybe a heart, on one side was nothing but beautifully cut stone, on the other was the crest of _the house of Dracul._

Their Persian prince didn’t realize what that meant. Not the way Roger and Vlad did.

“Love, I can’t _accept_ this.”

Roger forced a smile and set the box down on their nightstand.

“It’s your crest now too.” Was his only soft-spoken explanation.

“Yes, _Dragul meu._ Tonight is your _beginning.”_

  
-X-

  
_Roger_ was the one who did it.

It had to be him.

He who buried his fangs in Freddie’s carotid and gulped down that thick red ichor, mouthful after mouthful. Caught in a feeding frenzy that felt like it lasted hours instead of mere minutes. His father’s voice coaching him.

_You must drain him until just before the heart stops, then you must give him your blood. If you stop drinking too early he will die of blood loss. If you stop too late, the death will take both of you with it._

Freddie was limp in his arms like a rag-doll, he had been gasping at first and then went dead silent. Only the continued beat of his lover’s heart in his ears kept him going. _This is for him. Do it for him._ He blocked out Brian’s gasps of horror, the way Deaky vomited over the side of the bed, neither able to look away from their lovers’ dance of death. Phoebe supported Freddie’s weight when it looked like he was flagging. His father was still coaching him, listening for the hitch.

When it came, his father forcibly wrenched him away.

_**“Now, Meddows!”** _

His teeth tore open his wrist like his whole body was on autopilot, dripping the cursed liquid on Freddie’s ghostly pale pouty lips. The lips he’d kissed and caressed so often. The ones he knew better than his own.

_Oh God, wake up Freddie, please._

And wake up he did.

He latched onto Roger’s wrist and sucked with a ferocity that neither of them expected. Something shifted as Freddie suckled from him, eyes blown wide. Their eyes met for an instant and instead of seeing the usual sultry dark brown, he saw only _red._ The eyes of a creature desperate to survive.

“Stop, that is _enough!”_ His father ordered, but Roger didn’t pull away. He _couldn’t._ Freddie _needed_ it.

He would give it up. Give it all away. He would do anything for Freddie. For any of them. His lovers, the reason for the breath in his lungs and the sluggish beating of his heart.

He felt sickly warm. Then agony as his arm was violently torn away and he was thrown backwards into the mahogany bed-frame, denting it around him with the force of his body.

Freddie had shoved him away.

Freddie was _screaming_. Writhing on the comforter in utter horror and an unspeakable pain. Roger ached to comfort him, but everything was so heavy.

 _“Lovie, it’s alright.”_ He wanted to coo. _“You’re only dying mortal death.”_

Freddie shrieked like someone had covered him in gasoline and tossed a lit match. Roger’s head was flopped limply to the side and he watched as the years melted away from his lover.

The virus burned up in the fire that stole Freddie’s mortality. His hair grew out, dark and shiny and curly thick, brushing at his shoulders, his cheeks gained the definition of his youth, heightening those razor blade cheekbones once more. A healthy exotic flush to his skin and fangs that grew out even more prominent than his jutting front teeth. A vampire Freddie who looked so much like he’d stepped straight out of a Mick Rock photoshoot and yet nothing like the boy Roger remembered.

He was crying from the pain, soundless whispers for death to claim him, and some that were far from soundless.

Roger ached to reach for him, but he felt _lifeless, empty._

His eyes searched past Freddie, from the place no one else could look away from, to the mirror that hung on the opposite wall.

No one dared look away from Freddie.

They didn’t see the way Roger’s blue eyes widened. Seeing himself for the first time in the mirror. A _teenager_ ’s corpse with bloodless lips and skin, black hair fanning about his face and empty, vapid blue eyes.

He could feel the heart in his chest _slowing down_ , everything felt like it was getting harder and harder to muddle through. Freddie was tied to a stake, burning his way to an immortal life. Roger was crumbling to ash, watching everything fade before his eyes.

Replaced by the highlights of his life.

What a _wondrous adventure_ that it had all been…

Dressing up as a vampire, complete with exaggerated cape and waistcoat for American Halloween. Playing pretend as a gothic little school girl they called _Meadows_ for a lark during the video for _I Want to Break Free._ As if he could be seen then anyway through human eyes.

Slow-dancing in the rain. Clumsy first-times with fumbling hands and the way Brimi’s hair got stuck on Freddie’s belt buckle. Baking together, rescuing them that night Freddie had decided to make some chips without putting oil in the fryer. Deaky had refused to climb out of Roger’s arms for an hour, lest he throttle Freddie with his bare hands. Star-gazing with Bri, watching his eyes widen with wonder as he sat in Roger’s lap, the dhampir levitating them high into the night sky.

_‘They’re so beautiful…’_

_‘You certainly are.’_

_Ridge Farm. Ibiza. Japan. Romania. Bolivia. Germany. Mexico._ Traveling the world with his lovers by his side. Creating the music that they loved. He held every one of his children again, remembered butterfly kisses and goodnight stories. First steps and first words, crawling and raspberries blown into pudgy tummies.

 _‘Hi, I’m John Richard Deacon. I think I’m up to audition next, if that’s alright?’_ Eyes peaking out from beneath the curtain of his bangs.

 _‘Freddie. Freddie Bulsara.’_ A painfully shy smile.

 _‘Brian May.’_ A frowny face and an annoyed twitch to his words. _Huh._ He did get Brian May to love him after all.

Then he was sitting at a piano, playing for Clare who was sick with a nasty case of the flu. _‘Here, Baby Moon. Your song.’_ Launching into a messy rendition of _Clair de Lune_.

Watching horror movies with her and Mummy, laughing so hard that bits of his blood shake shot out of his nose.

Snuggled up tightly in his mother’s arms as a little boy, smelling her perfume and the eau of a mother that would comfort even the most fussy baby.

He was looking up at his father, with all the clarity of a newborn. Tasting first blood.

_“…OGER! Stay with us!…”_

He was at _peace_. So much of his life had been hard and forceful. Now everything was so still. He could even see the sun. Feel it wash across his cheeks without a single lick of pain.

Brian’s face swam above his own, his lips didn’t move though. He just looked anguished. It was his father who was screaming.

“ _Dying…Vampiric blood destroying the human cells… there isn't enough volume to keep his heart beating… Meddows!”_

His bloodless lips formed the words: _I love you, Brimi._ They were the last things he wanted Bri to hear from him. Just how much he was loved. The guitarist always thought too much, never realized just how much the simplest of words really meant.

 _“Roggie,_ don’t you _dare!”_

Freddie screeched, no, not his Freddie, the _new_ Freddie who was his Freddie still. The vampire Freddie who was crying bloody monstrous tears for the first time. Roger ached to raise a trembling hand to brush them away, but he could feel it already happening to him. He was _slipping away, into another place._

_I’m so sorry. I wish I could have saved you from this… My greatest achievement was giving you more time._

_I love you, Fred._

He’d made John cry again.

He had a bad habit of doing that. The bassist was crying so hard that words couldn’t even get past his lips.

_God, Deaky, you were one of the best bits of my life. I just wish I could’ve given you more. Thank you for loving me…_

For a creature of darkness and aberration, the end was so gentle.

 _Meddows Roger Taylor_ , also named _Radu Vladimir Ioanenes_ , was born on October 31st, in the wee hours of the morning when the veil between their world and the other was thinnest. A liminal time.

He closed his eyes on the night of Beltane nearly forty years later.

 _Beltane,_ the beginning of the warmer months, the opposite of _Samhain_ in the Wheel of Life. A liminal time.

He was born damned.

But in that moment, he was _anything_ but.

  
-X-

 _“There's no time for us_  
_There's no place for us_  
_What is this thing that builds our dreams_  
_Yet slips away from us?_

_Who wants to live forever?_

_There's no chance for us_  
_It's all decided for us_  
_This world has only one_  
_Sweet moment set aside for us…_

 _Who dares to love forever_  
_Oh, when love must die?_

 _But touch my tears with your lips_  
_Touch my world with your fingertips…_

 _And we can have forever_  
_And we can love forever_  
_Forever is our today._

 _Who wants to live forever?_  
_Forever is our today_

_Who waits forever anyway?”_

  
_-“Who Wants to Live Forever”_ by _Queen_ ’s Brian May

 


	4. The Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello darlings! 
> 
> This the promised epilogue, but don't be glum! There will be more in the series soon! Featuring all the lovely members of this. As I said, it's only the beginning. :) ;)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: We do not support pedophiles or non-con abusive relationships here. 
> 
> The (more than platonic) relationship between Amy and Robbie does not occur until Robbie is a grown goddamn man and is fully capable of making his own choices of what he wants to do and who he wants to love. :)
> 
> Bunic: grandfather in Romanian
> 
> Froggie: Roger  
> Brimi: Brian  
> Bapuji: Freddie  
> Dad: Deaky

_“Eye of newt, and toe of frog,_  
_Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,_  
_Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,_  
_Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,—_

 _For a charm of powerful trouble,_  
_Like a hell-broth boil and bubble._  
_Double, double toil and trouble;_  
_Fire burn, and caldron bubble.”_

― William Shakespeare

 

 

Robbie Deacon met _The Devil_ when he was seven years old.

And he wasn’t talking about his _Bunic_ either, Froggie’s father.

Actually, _Amy_ was a Prince of Hell, so just a powerful demon. Not exactly _The Devil_ but close enough.

He met his contractor at a street carnival in Piccadilly Circus, he had a pocket full of 10 quid and a line of younger siblings trailing after him like a clutch of ducklings. Mikey, Lo, Jimmy and even little Felix, a too-warm wet face nuzzled into his neck as he toted the vampiric toddler along.

Their fathers had been busy preparing for a show at the time, leaving the kids to their own devices or in the care of their usual Nanny Freestone. _(Of course they’d snuck away from Uncle Phoebe. It was all they ever did)._

The babies, Lulu and Rory, were still with their minder. While an excited Mikey made them stop and stare at every shop window as they passed by. Lo and Felix were gumming at Robbie’s mustard-colored hair or yanking at it in fistfuls. Poor Jimmy had his face buried in Robbie’s tummy like an angry little limpet as they waddled along.

Being a big brother right _sucked_ sometimes.

Mikey raced on ahead of them, until he collided sharply with a pair of black jeans that sent him falling backwards onto his bum, arms pinwheeling as he went down with a soft _oomph._ The tall redheaded figure scowled down at Robbie's little brother, as though the poor kid had killed somebody instead of just being his overexcited self.

Robbie raced over _(well, as fast as he could race with all his attachments)_ and dragged his little brother to his feet, positioning himself between Mikey and the scary redhead.

“Sorry, sir. He’s just excited.”

Robbie really didn’t sound all that apologetic, but he smiled anyway.

Concealing his birth-father’s temperament behind his soft child features.

“It is okay, _Robert.”_

The tall man hummed and Robbie thought that was the end of it, dragging the kids along with him. But he stiffened mid-turn. _How did he…?_

_“Come.”_

The man wasn’t smiling, but he seemed warmer somewhat as he beckoned, fingers curling towards his palm in a  _come hither_ motion.

Robbie’s arms were suddenly weighed down, heavy as anvils with the children who rested there. He remembered being utterly terrified of the redheaded man, in his dark clothes and rattling chain jewelry. It was like a nod to one of the ghosts from _A Christmas Story._

He was planning on just plain running, until he saw the glint of something _strange_ in those dark feral eyes.

“Mikey, take the kids and go to Uncle Phoebe. _Now_.” He passed over Felix and Lo near seamlessly and Jimmy obediently took Mikey’s hand at Robbie's behest. “ _Run, and don’t look back.”_

“But…” He saw his little brother’s lip start to quiver and he shook his head slightly, eyes wide.

 _‘Remember Froggie’s lessons?’_ He mouthed pointedly, as clarity dawned in his little brother’s eyes _this is what he trained us for_ and in the next second he was practically flitting away, off to get help and the little ones to safety as Robbie turned back to the redheaded man looming before him, tiny hands curled into fists as he stood his ground.

Trying to portray his whole defense with his eyes alone. _My Froggie, one of my fathers, has fangs half the time, and my baby brother does too. My Uncle Phoebe is a hairy scary werewolf. You aren’t all that impressive, bruv._

“ _Come, Robert. We have an engagement.”_

The redheaded man, his demon, his contractor, _Amy_ before he knew him as Amy, took him by the hand. One tiny soft _(human)_ hand wrapped in a huge clawed other.

“How did you know my name?”

Petulant, with his bottom lip jutting out plaintively as he was tugged along into the shadows. The walls around them seemed to ripple, all the colors and lights were swimming _around and around_ and made him nauseous. He used the redheaded man’s hand to anchor him.

“Are you here to hurt my family?”

That question came out more demanding than the first, and when neither was answered, he ripped his hand away. Teeth gritted tight and his nose wrinkled, spinning around with fists raised. As if he could actually defend himself against one of _Froggie’s_ enemies.

The room stopped moving the moment their hands disconnected.

The demon before him was less than impressed.

“I’m not here to take anything from you, or to hurt anyone you love, Robert. In fact, I’m here to give you _a gift.”_

Robbie’s narrowed suspiciously. “I don’t want _The Bite_ or a _Turning.” He wasn't stupid._

The redheaded man smiled.

“I am not a werewolf or a vampire, little Deacon. I _created_ them.” The creature came closer and closer, until they were right in front of each other, close enough to touch. “Oh no, I am here to give you a gift that will let you _help your family, keep them safe, and thwart the laws of life and death.”_

“That’s _impossible_. Besides my family is full of _immortals_ anyway. _I don’t need you.”_

Scowling, pudgy arms crossed and lips pursed like a pair of taut strings.

 _“The living dead cannot die._ ” Robbie froze. “That little brother of yours? With the diluted vampiric blood? Enjoy his twelve years of life, before the vampiric blood in his veins destroys the marrow of his long bones and takes his life with it.” Robbie looked up with genuine fear in his big blue eyes.

“ _Felix? That's going to happen to_ …I’ll be able to _save Felix_ with your gift?”

The demon nodded, extending a hand again.

“You’ll be able to save them all.”

Robbie Deacon, seven years old and raised by human monsters, peered at that hand suspiciously once more. “What’s the catch?”

“I, _Avnas, Prince of Hell and 58th spirit of the Goetia,_ will have claim to your human soul.”

Robbie Deacon gave a demon claim to his soul when he was seven years old.

He became a _contract-witch_ that day, a future warrior of Amy’s thirty-six legion army.

_One of the damned._

  
-X-

  
“Why me?”

Robbie would ask in later years, sleeping with his head pillowed in Amy’s lap after one of their consensual midnight excursions.

He would ask it as a man, with a halo of mustardseed curls around his head, a pentacle on his palm and a tongue like a viper. His porcelain fingers interlaced with a hand that had once been so big.

The redheaded demon’s blue flames licked at his skin like the raspy tongue of a cat, tickling rather than burning as the witch snuggled closer to his contractor, his demon, his lover. Amy used his forked tongue to play with Robbie’s pointed ear, bending the cartilage _back and forth, back and forth_ , before he spoke.

“I’m all-knowing, all seeing, _carissime_.” The latin word term of endearment sent a pleasant shiver up his spine. “I saw _more_ than you as a stubborn child back then, I saw what you would _become_.”

Blue eyes met red.

“You knew that you’d _love me_ one day?” Robbie smiled, smugly like the cat who’d gotten the cream. Amy rolled his eyes and lightly pinched the younger man’s backside, making him pout something fierce.

“ _No_ , you cheeky little imp.” Before Amy, he wouldn’t have known that a Prince of Hell could blush. _“The love_ is all your fault. Nobody else but _you_ would fall in love with a _demon_. Perhaps there’s something _wrong up here_.” Gently knocking on the side of Robbie’s head.

The witch shrugged, wiggling even closer.

“My Dad fell in love with a _half-vampire_ , So I guess _like-father-like-son_. We both love the dangerous types, the ones who could probably kill us.” He furrowed his brow, still pouting. “But… If not _love_ then what?”

“I saw what you could _do_ , what you were going to _be_ … Let us just say, my boss didn’t want you fighting on the side of the angels.”

Those hands, burning with blue hellfire, gently rubbed their thumbs across his cheekbones.

“I only wanted a soldier.”

Robbie snapped his teeth instead, in a beautifully gory smile. A man who wouldn't be bowed, who couldn't be tamed. “Funny, ‘cause if _I_ remember correctly, _I’m_ the one who wanted _you_.”

  
-X-

  
Robbie knew that his Bapuji was sick, long before the adults bothered to tell them anything.

But they all knew.

At least poor Felix certainly did. The little boy could smell it, the same way the cats could. Sometimes he would have to cover his nose and mouth and run into another room to cry. Things were _really really bad._

For the rest of the kids it was just a suspicion, but it wasn’t hard to see the looming death-sentence with the way everyone else acted around _him_. Hell, around _them_. They weren’t _that dull._

Bapuji was always smiling though, smiling widely with all his teeth exposed, as he would ask them what they wanted for Christmas and their birthdays. Even if their birthday had just gone by. He went shopping over and over and over again. Sometimes he would spend hours in the garden just painting.

When Robbie found the little clutch of presents for each of them, hidden away in a room upstairs, with different dates and birthdays written on them in Bapuji’s careful hand, he stiffened and closed it again. Running to his room before he burst into tears.

He was _thirteen years old_ , still in the stage of his platonic frenemy relationship with Amy, one that was far more hate than anything else… edging towards eventual begrudging acceptance.

When he awoke in the middle of the night to the man’s voice himself, shaking him awake, he scowled and almost cast a spell from sheer irritation but…

_**“Robert, your Roger is dying. He tried to…”** _

“… _Turn,_ Bapuji.” His raw more-than-awake voice finished for the demonic entity speaking inside his head and he threw himself out of bed. _“Shit!”_

Snatching up his rusted bloody athame, a ceremonial blade, from the little locked box he kept. hidden behind the wooden slats underneath his bed, and an old book that Amy had given him, after he’d used his own blood to sign his name on the first page. It had become his, the ritualistic _Book of Shadows_ of a contract-witch.

Then he was running down the hallways and a flight of twisty stairs as fast as his pink socked feet would allow him to do so.

Cursing both the carpeting and Bapuji’s penchant for pretty things, every time he nearly tripped and flung himself into the sun with the force of it. He knew the way to his fathers’ room, nestled as it was in the center of the house like a heartbeat, because he’d traversed it multiple times a day, from the time he was old enough to be autonomously mobile.

Of course he loved his Mum, the way a child is always wont to do.

The same way he loved his Aunts and Uncle Joe and Phoebe. But his fathers were something else entirely.

  
_Froggie, Bapuji, Dad, Brimi,_ they were his _primary_ parents. Sure, his Mum was as well, especially on tour stuff, and the Uncles and Aunts had been loving on him since the day they’d arrived. But his relationship with those four was something _special._

It no accident that he called his siblings, _his siblings._

Despite the differing blood in their veins.

He careened into that room with all the decorum of a battering ram, nearly taking his eye out with the fucking casting knife as his hip slammed against an end table near the door and shattered a fancy purple vase. _Fuck_.

He was just about to apologize too, on reflex, when he actually processed what was happening in the room before his eyes.

_Holy. Fucking. Shit._

Uncle Joe was shaking in the corner, arms wrapped tightly around himself and eyes shut against the world.

Bapuji was crying at the end of the bed, safe in Uncle Jim’s arms, turned away from where Robbie could see, all he could see was the hair… _hair that was longer than he remembered, a lither body too_ … and the quaking shoulders as he sobbed. _Brimi_ was on the floor, legs tucked under him and staring at the carpet, not even making a sound. Like he’d just crashed or something. Fallen to the ground and forgotten how _to think, to live, to breathe_. A marionette with its strings cut.

It was the scene on the bed though, that really made Robbie feel ill.

Phoebe, Dad and his Bunic, _grandfather Vlad_ , were feverishly working over a corpse with fanned out dark hair and the same round features as Felix.

_Froggie._

_But also not. He almost couldn't recognize his father._

Despite his chaotic entrance, it was if nobody had so much as seen him, a veritable ghost as he neared the bed, eyes wide and horrified, pupils stretched from corner-to-corner of his irises.

His Bunic was biting Froggie’s arms and chest, over and over and over again.

Phoebe was doing the same on his end, hoping that at least one venom would take hold, and it looked as if someone had tried to force the corpse, that _thing_ lying akimbo that was once Froggie, to _drink_ as his full lips were smeared with crimson blood.

His Dad was doing CPR, pounding on Froggie’s chest with the whole of his body weight, as if desperate to get the dead heart beneath his hands to start beating once more. It was utterly _devastating_ to see.

His Dad wasn’t normally good with emotions, unless it was anger or upset. But the man on top of Froggie was frenzied, sobbing so hard and screaming complete nonsense, that it was a wonder he had enough air to blow into the corpse’s mouth at all. Forcing the chest _up and down, up and down._

But it wasn’t _catching_ , it wasn’t doing _anything._

That spark inside the corpse, that spark that had once made Froggie, _Froggie_ was just gone. That thing wasn’t their Froggie anymore.

His hand reached out, and he felt all of two years old again, reaching out for Froggie to kiss his booboos better, a tiny pale hand that always found a home inside a too-warm one.

A slightly larger pale hand now touched that same skin and it was chilled like ice. He recoiled at the wrongness of the sensation.

“ _Froggie.”_ He whimpered.

Something that finally seemed to spurn the acknowledgment of the other living beings in the room. Though now it was Robbie who couldn’t look away from the dead.

“ _Robbie._ ” Phoebe sounded strangled. “ _Robbie, please go back to bed.”_ A forced tearful smile that never reached his eyes.

“… _There’s nothing you can do.”_

“He wouldn’t want you to see him like this.” His Dad sounded utterly destroyed, his voice was wrecked and almost as bad as he looked.

“Well, I don’t give _a damn_ about what he wants!” Blood pooled in Robbie’s cheeks. His teeth were gritted tightly and he flung his athame and blood book onto the bed, climbing up on his hands and knees to join them. “I’m going to _save his life!”_

Vlad blinked at him, and those ruddy feral eyes honed in on the ritualistic items before him. His mouth falling open slightly in shock.

Then his gaze turned back to his fallen son and he was resolute all at once.

“What do you want us to do?”

His Dad was aghast. “Robbie, what are you _on about?”_ A sad laugh as he stopped giving chest compressions and sat back with a tearful desolation about him. “ _Love, there’s nothing you can do._ ” He sounded like he was already dead. His father opened his arms for a hug or maybe absolution, but Robbie simply shook his head, setting his jaw tightly as he took his _Book of Shadows_ into his arms.

He opened it to a blank page and used the sharp edge of the cover to garner a drop of blood from his thumb. Pressing it to the parchment.

_Amy, I need candles for the circle and symbols of earth, air, fire and water to call each corner._

_Please._

“ _ **Here you are, little witch.”**_

The candles were made of long strips of white and black wax, _life and death_ , five that he set to one side, a vial of water _(at least he sincerely hoped it was water),_ and a handful of … _dirt._

_Yes, of course, thank you so much Amy for this handful of old black dirt without a container._

**_“Cheeky little brat.”_ **

He resisted the urge to stick out his tongue.

Instead he snatched up the candles and all but threw them into his Bunic’s arms. “ _Here!_ Make a circle around the bed but don’t light them.”

“What are you _doing,_ darling? Where did those _come from?!_ ”

His Bapuji’s voice sounded _weird._ Not a bad kind of weird, but like he’d never smoked a ciggie before or ever even gotten sick in the first place. Robbie turned over to see blood tears drying on a Bapuji that he’d only ever seen on old album covers, except this one had red eyes, fangs that stuck out farther than his existing teeth and a strange feral sheen about him, with the way he focused on everything Robbie was holding.

The only thing the little witch could say was: “Oh God, it actually _worked.”_

The next thing was: “ _I summoned them_. Please I’ve got to _heal_ him, Bapuji. I need you to get Brimi off the floor and Uncle Joe out of the corner. Please trust me, I can do this!” His voice was verging on the desperate and his Bapuji must have seen something there, because he jumped into action.

Uncle Jim helped as well, his Uncle Jim who looked at him in a way that he never had before.

Almost like something akin to _fear._ Fear _of_ him, or fear _for_ him, the boy didn't know.

“Bri, please get on the bed, love… Yes, there. Now that’s the ticket.”

“Joe, darling, come we can’t do this without you.”

It was only when they were all on the bed, looking at him in varying states of shock and confusion that he picked up his athame again.

And used the sharpness to carve a pentacle into the soft pale flesh of his hand.

Blood welled up from the deep scours in his flesh, like oil from the deep dark recesses of the earth. His Bapuji swallowed hard, turning away from the blood with the trembling form of a newly turned vampire, while his Dad cried out and snatched up his son's injured hand with his own.

“ _What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”_

Trying to blot at the raw flesh as if to stop the bleeding.

Robbie snatched his hand back defiantly. Setting his jaw against the only person who could out-stubborn him. Their usual peacekeeper was a corpse between them.

“ _Robert Deacon!”_

He completely ignored his father and turned to the group at large.

“Join hands and _don’t scream_.”

He took the dirt into his own.

_“I call to the guardians of the North! Children of the earth and new life! Hear my cry, bring back your son who cannot die!”_

He spoke in a voice that wasn’t his own. But one that wasn’t Amy’s either, his casting voice was deep raw and gravelly like it was being dragged up from the very pits of hell. Blue flames exploded in his palms to burn up the dirt, and the candles at the front of the bed lit up with hellish light.

Then the vial of water.

“ _I call to the guardians of the West! Children of the sea and change! Hear my cry, bring back one who cannot die!”_

Then he paused. Looking at the many faces pressed in a circle around him, looking at him like they never had before. Like in that moment he wasn’t their son, he wasn’t little Robbie Deacon anymore. He was a _monster. A thing of nightmares._

“I need something made of metal to call the guardians of fire…”

Instantly his Bunic was pressing a black steel ring with the face of a gargoyle into his hand.

_“I call to the guardians of the South! Children of fire and passion! Hear my cry, bring back a father who cannot die!”_

Then he held his athame into the air, still dripping with his own blood.

“ _I call to the guardians of the East! Children of air and loss! Hear my cry, save one who cannot die!”_

Suddenly the entire room was ablaze with hellfire, flames that wouldn’t burn anything except for what Robbie wanted them to. His eyes were closed as he reached out and laid a hand on his Froggie’s bare chest.

_**“Lower, Robert. Find his iliac crest, where his blood cells are made. Wake up the marrow.”** _

He slid his hands down lower, to hug his father’s hips. Staining the icy skin with his blood.

Under Amy’s careful guidance he forced the blood cells to reform, forced the vampiric blood in those veins to start jostling about once again. Fighting inside the body to manipulate it. To get that precious heart beating. He poured everything he had into it.

Froggie holding his hands as he stumbled through his first steps, his first lost tooth, his first triumphs and first defeats, his first crush, his first broken heart: all the milestones of his first _thirteen years of life._ Dancing around the kitchen with socks as ballet shoes. He never cared about his father’s unique lineage or the red eyes and fangs. He never cared about the baggies of blood in their fridge or anything that they couldn’t control. His Froggie was always _perfect_ in his eyes.

He always knew how much the family meant to his Froggie, but he also knew without a doubt, above all else. _They_ , he and his siblings, were the _loves_ of Froggie’s life.

Reading goodnight stories in funny voices to make them laugh, coming up behind them to sweep them up in his arms, tickling and kissing the daylights out of them. Spinning them around up on his shoulders. He would’ve done anything for them. He had even given up his life for Bapuji's. The purest kind of love was selfless love. Love beyond all confines.

_Please. He doesn’t deserve this. Amy, please._

He felt the small twitch and then how that deadened heart began to beat once again, slow at first and then in the frantic pounding staccato beat of a _dhampir._

Froggie's skin grew flush with an uncomfortable heat, and his fanning dark hair began to lighten. Half-mast blue glassy eyes darkened to a crimson red, the milky haze fading away.

Roger Taylor woke up _screaming_.  
  
Jackknifing up ramrod straight with full vampiric features displayed: wrinkled bat nose, elongated fangs and bloody eyes. Alive, so fucking _alive._

Well, about as alive as the living dead could be.

The flames on Robbie’s body were extinguished all at once, and he flung himself into his Froggie’s trembling arms, sobbing like he was three years old again instead of thirteen. Clinging to the bloody skin and letting that too-fast heartbeat fill his ears with its heavenly sound.

  
-X-

  
The fact that his dads’ bed was strong enough to hold all of them _(Froggie, Dad, Brimi, Bapuji, Mum, Auntie Dom, Uncle Phoebe, Uncle Jim and Uncle Joe),_ was pretty spectacular, considering all of them were clinging to Froggie and each other, without the slightest thought of letting go.

Dom tore his dads and uncles a new asshole each for not calling her once things went sour with the change _(the one that apparently everybody knew about but him)_ and Froggie seemed to be reeling from the fact that he’d nearly ended up six-feet under.

Robbie shook his head from where his face was still smushed into his Froggie’s furnace-warm chest.

“ _No,_ ” His voice was small, eyes still closed. “ _The living dead can’t die.”_

His Bunic was sitting by the window, a gentle smile on the young yet ancient face.

But that smile faded when turned on his grandson, edged by a touch of knowing sadness.

“Which one was it, _guriță?”_ He asked softly, eyes shaded. “Which demon?”

Froggie was sitting up at once, looking at Vlad with bewilderment.

“What _demon_ , Dad? What are you talking about?”

Vlad gestured to Robbie, then turned fully to face the teenager. “Which demon did you sell your soul to, Robert?”

To say that all hell broke loose would be an understatement.

He simply hung his head and spoke over the throng.

“ _Avnas._ And I didn’t sell it, I let him lay claim.”

Vlad cocked an eyebrow, “A _Prince of Hell? Well._ I suppose you deserve credit for _shooting high_.”

“So I wasn’t hallucinating you being on fire?” His Froggie sounded sick. Robbie just shook his head. Still not daring to raise his gaze from where it was examining the drops of blood on the bedclothes, ones that looked like rose petals spread across the plush duvet.

“You’re _thirteen years old!_ How in the hell did you sell your soul to _a demon?! Why? What possessed you to do that?”_

His Dad looked livid and it was finally enough for Robbie to raise his head and glare with everything he had.

“I was _seven years old!”_ He wailed, fists clenched and tears welling up in his eyes. “It wasn’t exactly _in my life plan, alright?”_

He whipped his head around to meet their stares head-on. “Yes! I’m a _contract-witch_ , I let a demon lay claim on my soul to save my little brother’s life, to have the power to save all of yours, and I’d do it again if given half the chance!”

He was crying genuine human tears.

“No need to worry about _my damnation!”_ He let out a little hysterical laugh. One of his Froggie's favorite words. _“I’ve already gone and damned myself.”_

His Brimi, his closest father to him, dragged him into a hug so crushing that he whimpered. They all followed suit. So lost was he in their embrace that he almost didn’t hear Amy’s sad voice, guilty and heavy in his head. He never knew a demon could feel remorse.

“ ** _Little witch, I am so sorry.”_**

  
-X-

  
Phoebe turned Joe into a _lycanthrope_ once he started showing signs of having AIDS as well.

They had been together for as long as Robbie could remember and he threw white petals at their little forest wedding in the backyard.

Their family grew as he did, every years or so bringing more siblings with it.

 _Josh_ came only a year or so after his first meeting with Amy. _Luke and Cam_ were his Mum’s last foray into the baby-making front. And he was old enough to have fathered them himself by the time they came along. But he loved them all the same.

 _Tiger Lilly_ and _Rufus Tiger Taylor_ came after a family trip to Mexico.

They were _naguals_ , shape-shifters who could take the form of jaguars. Mesoamerican indian folklore called them protective spirits that guarded the rural villages from the dark sprits who lurked in the deepest parts of the jungle. He called them his little pain-in-ass imps who were always underfoot, causing mischief with their half-transformed faces and bending Bapuji’s cat army to their will. But beyond it all, they were his baby brother and sister, and he loved them thusly.

 _Lola May Taylor_ was a Christmas baby, left on their doorstep like a little Christmas miracle.

He wondered if her birth-parents knew that they'd left their child on the doorstep of the Addams' Family. _(Or maybe they were more like The Munsters?)_

She and Aunt Mary’s little boys completed their family.

As years passed, he wondered how long it would be until Bapuji and Froggie would change Dad and Brimi.

The answer for Dad was on a warm spring day in March, when he was in his late fifties.

Curly hair shot with thick waves of gray that they teased made him look like _The Bride of Frankenstein._ He had been in the kitchen with Phoebe that morning, making a cup of coffee with Bapuji sitting up on the countertop stealing kisses, as the rest of the family all sat around the table and wherever else they could fit. Hanging out during a weekend brekkie.

When his father’s face had suddenly creased with a surprise pain, and the cup had fallen from his grip, shattering into a dozen pieces on the floor. They'd all watched it fall.

Watched as their father collapsed to his knees, gripping his chest and curling inward from the pain of his _heart-attack._

For an instant Robbie actually thought the older Deacon was bending down to clean up the mess.

Froggie and Bapuji changed him on the kitchen floor, as all of the kids huddled around like a horde of emperor penguins guarding their eggs. Robbie ready to conjure, just in case.

Dad woke up to his new life with everyone he loved watching with bated breath. Robbie would never get used to the way he looked like his vampire Dad’s twin.

Brimi lasted the longest, he was in his early seventies when he came home from a routine doctor’s visit with a set of test results in one hand and a clutch of freshly cut flowers in the other. They changed him in bed, all three of them together. Robbie sat against the door until the wee hours of the morning, listening, ready just in case. But he wasn’t needed.

They were all okay.

And it was only _the beginning_ …

  
-X-

  
His Amy, his friend, his contractor, his demon, his lover, was a living, breathing demonic asshole.

But Robbie had to give him credit, a living, breathing demonic asshole with _morals._ Nothing happened between them until Robbie Deacon was a grown man, a goddamn adult with a free-for-all choice of what he wanted to do to with his life. He didn’t owe anything to Amy or hell until the day he was steered away from the pearly gates.

But they fell in love anyway.

Even though demons were meant to never love humans. Even though he should hate the demon prince for claiming his soul like a greedy asshole who didn’t want him tearing Hell apart by the seams.

They loved anyway. The truest rebels of all.

_“My little witch, my sunshine… I’ll burn the contact, take it all away, if you only ask.”_

_“No, this is my life. My choice.”_

_You’re my choice._

He didn’t say. He didn’t need to.

It wasn’t ordinary. It wasn’t normal. But it was _theirs._

They loved.

  
-X-

  
“ _Mama, life had just begun_  
_But now I've gone and thrown it all away…_

 _Mama, ooh (any way the wind blows)_  
_Didn't mean to make you cry_  
_If I'm not back again this time tomorrow_  
_Carry on, carry on as if nothing really matters_

 _…I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me_  
_He's just a poor boy from a poor family_  
_Spare him his life from this monstrosity_  
_Easy come, easy go, will you let me go?_

 _Bismillah! No, we will not let you go (let him go!)_  
_Bismillah! We will not let you go (let him go!)_  
_Bismillah! We will not let you go (let him go!)_  
_Will not let you go (let him go!)_

 _Never, never let you go_  
_Never let me go, oh_  
_No, no, no, no, no, no, no_  
_Oh, mama mia, mama mia (mama mia, let me go)_

_Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for me…”_

_-Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody_

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come harass me on tumblr if you'd like :) 
> 
> @waywardrunawaycherryblossom
> 
> (Yeah, I know, it's dumb, but now I'm keeping it on principle). :p

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Another "Another Damn (Vam)pire Story"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16886295) by [BrooklynBugleBoy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrooklynBugleBoy/pseuds/BrooklynBugleBoy), [Mimi011](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mimi011/pseuds/Mimi011)




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